Forest of Mists
by Hyena Cub
Summary: The Forest of Mists was once a natural forest.
1. The Forest of Mists

  
  


The Forest of Mists 

(In this one I rewrite a few thigns and change the geography around a littl bit. But I hope that I may be forgiven on the basis that it makes a good story.) 

1 

The Forest of Mists 

It was the only place that they had not yet fully explored, whose mysterious depths had not been mentally mapped and filed. The only place within the distance that Tygra allowed them to explore alone (and a few places they _weren't_ allowed to explore) that remained an enigma. 

Part of the problem was that the other ThunderCats seemed to think it foolishly dangerous to do so, and never let them try. True, it was close to the forbidden territory, Darkside, and the mists had a dampening effect on their sensors, but that made it all the more tempting! And besides, if they could use it to get into the Darkside without having to pass the Thundranium of Fire Rock Mountain, they could find out what was in there! 

Wilykit and Wilykat lay in their bedroom on the floor, a home-drawn map spread out between them. "We're gonna have to go this weekend, when the others are on their scouting mission," Wilykit said. Wilykat nodded, the comforting sunshine beating down on his back from the open window. A fresh breeze warmed the room. 

"Yeah...then all that we have to worry about is Snarf and Tygra...and we don't have any chores to do, either." 

"And here...that's where it starts." Wilykit frowned. "The Forest of Mists sure is big." During their explorations, the twins had mapped out the whole area from the Cats' lair _to_ the Forest of Mists. No one had much of an accurate map to the Darkside that lay beyond the forest, or the woods themselves, as both places held a bad place among local lore. Although not superstitious, the ThunderCats knew that most such legends had a root in truth. They had a vague idea of how big it was, but that was it. And it was big. Bigger than the unicorn forest or the forest of silence. 

"It's too bad we can't get into the forbidden territory...maybe the forest's easier to get into from there." 

Wilykit shook her head., "Yeah, but unless you wanna get Thundranium poisoning we can't. Fire Rock Mountain - " 

"I know that." 

The twins sighed, looking at the map as if a solution would present itself. "Well," Wilykit said, pointing to the west side of the forest's borders. That was all they had mapped, as it was at the edge of the boundary that they were allowed to explore in. "Let's see if it ends over here or not; maybe there's some kind of path." 

"I guess so," Wilykat said, standing up. "But we haven't found one yet, what makes you think that there's one over there?" 

Wilykit shrugged. "Well, if anything we can add to the map! The other ThunderCats don't even have anything over there mapped." Wilykit spoke as they both headed down to the hangar to get their spaceboards, stopping first to tell Tygra they were going exploring. He admonished them to take some sandwiches and their communicators, and be back before dark. 

"Well, we know the Berbil Village is over that way," Wilykat said, flying on her board towards their destination. "But I guess it's more south than anything." 

"And a LOT farther away. I think the forest messes with the sensors, so no one wanted to risk getting too close yet. I mean they' re still trying to convince the Warrior Maidens that live in the south that we can be allies! That Willa is convinced, I think, but I heard Lion-O saying that she's got a stubborn people." 

"Talk about sexist," Wilykat grumbled. The Warrior maidens had rubbed him the wrong way, with their highly female-oriented attitudes. He'd had to practically shout for any of them to even look at him the last time they'd visited. 

Wilykit shot her brother a grin. "Nothing wrong with that,' she said. Wilykat only glared at her, and they flew on. 

Eventually the pair reached the edge of the forest and slowed down near the edge. "Okay..." Wilykit said, pointing. "That's as far as we got..." She glanced behind her as if Tygra might be spying on them to see if they kept their word, and she woudln't put it past him to be watching them on the sensors! "Let's go." 

The forest continued as the twins did, and for a while they both wondered if the forest went on forever. It was darker here, a strange dimness emanated form the forest itself, engulfing the air beyond it with gloom for at least fifty feet. The mist itself only extended a yard or two beyond the trees. Wilykit and Wilykat skimmed the edge of this gloom, as the unnatural darkness gave both of them the willies. "It is _really_ creepy," Wilykat said as he always did when they came down this way. 

"Yeah...I still wanna know why it's always so dark. Almost like it's a different dimension or something like that." She shivered. "And that mist... Is it water-mist, like before a rain, or is it like a chemical or something? And how come it's just in the forest...how can it stay that way all the time with hot sun all around it?" Wilykit mused over the questions that the ThunderCats had all asked about this odd forest They'd found many places on Third Earth that puzzled them, almost as if they were entirely different ecosystems within the one they lived. So unnatural and different from their own Thundera. 

After flying more or less in silence for about forty-five minutes, Wilykat suddenly pointed. "Wilykit!' he said, nearly startling her enough to fall off her board. "Look at that!" had they somehow stumbled into the Berbil Village? but no, the forest had bent more towards the east, away from the odd little bears. 

Wilykit looked. What Wilykat had seen was the edge of a building, something that almost looked like an archaic tool shed like she'd seen in books, except it had windows in it. It was sticking out, barely, from the gloom, and as she looked, it seemed the forest was thinning! Wilykit's eyes widened with excitement. "Wilykat! This is it, it's the end of the forest! And look, it's not so dense here..." 

Wilykat looked uneasy, but he too was eager to see what was there. He did not remember there being a village here, but as he and Wilykit dismounted next to the little shack, they could both make out the outlines of other buildings, disappearing into the gloom. "Um," Wilykit said. "Uh, let's go a little farther out, where the forest isn't so dense..." She apparently was also a little unnerved by the village being so far into the woods. 

The buildings did eventually get easier to see, and it had been a town at one point. If the houses were any indication it was a town of creatures far larger than the Berbils. Maybe even bigger than Thunderians! Maybe. As they walked, the trees and undergrowth between the buildings thinned, and the mist began to lift. Wilykit was right. They had found where the forest ended. 

When they reached what could only be the outskirts, the first of the trees was several yards away, and the buildings stood in broad daylight. Both twins were squinting as they looked around the seemingly deserted town. From what they could see only bout a tenth of the village was outside the forest, but why would anyone want to build their village half into a forest where you couldn't even see anything? 

"Maybe they like the mist," Wilykat said. "They might be some kind of creature that doesn't like bright lights." 

"Well, then why is this part out in the light?' Wilykit countered. 

Well, that was a good question, wasn't it? And one Wilykat had no answer to. "Well,' he said, peered at a run-down two-story house with a deeply sloped roof. The building all seemed to have a circular shape somewhere on it, there were none that were square like the Warrior Maidens' homes, but of course they were not round huts like the Berbils made. He walked up to one and touched it, and a flake pfd paint fell from the walls. "Let's go in...maybe there's pictures or something inside..." 

"What, just walk in without knocking?" Wilykit said. "What if people still live here?' She gave her brother a look that said "What are you, a moron?" and walked up to the door. Raising a fist that shook only slightly, she rapped smartly on the wood. She frowned as a splinter stuck in her knuckle and she pulled it from her skin while she waited. 

"No one's coming..." Wilykat said. He dashed over to another house to do the same thing. 

Wilykit nearly cried out for him to come back, for some odd reason suddenly not wanting to split up at all, but held herself back. She was being silly; he was just next door, and she could see him just fine. But apparently no one was home there, either. "There's no one here, Wilykit...look at the place!" Wilykat called, and winced a bit. Shouting in this forgotten town seemed like telling crude jokes at a death ceremony. "I'm going in." 

"Oh...fine. but wait for me!" Wilykit called back, and ran over. This house was not painted, but its natural colored wooden sides were warped and splintering, long since having lost whatever protective coating the wood might have had. Wilykat tried the door, which was unlocked. Looking at his sister, who looked back with nervous, excited eyes, Wilykat opened the door. 

Part 2: Forgotten 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	2. Forgotten

  


2 

Forgotten 

"Whoa." It was the only thing that could really convey what Wilykit and Wilykat felt when stepped into the house. It was unlocked, and the door swung open with a creak, bit of rust falling down off the hinges. 

The air was still. Completely and totally still, and it was dank and stale. Wilykat shivered. "Wow... It's as hot in here as outside, but...it somehow feels cold. Almost like it should be cold but isn't." 

"That's the dampness," Wilykit said knowingly, but she also felt like shivering. The place felt dead. "Do...I mean...all the stuff's still here,' Wilykit said. "I wonder if someone _is_ living here..." 

Wilykat immediately shook his head. "No. There's no one here, it all feels abandoned... I mean look at this, the wood's rotting, and the carpet's eaten through in some places. I don't even hear any rats or birds or anything... no flies.. it's like it was all vacuum-sealed, airtight." He wrinkled his nose. "I sure smell must and mold though." 

"Yeah..." 

The twins were silent, then, as close together they began to explore the strange house. The living room was huge and dark, the wood stained darker than normal from moisture, from the strangely humid air. There were two big bookcases full of old books. Curious, Wilykat crept up to one and took it from the shelf, but frowned when he tried to open it. They were very old, and the page broke in half, it was so brittle. It looked as if it had gotten damp and dried several times. 

Not that it mattered, it was in a different language that seemed somewhat familiar, but was so distorted that he couldn't tell why. Probably his imagination, he thought. as he put it back. And it was so old. 

Wilykit had wandered into the next room, and Wilykat shivered and ran after her, not wanting to be alone. He felt as if the very house itself might reach out and grab him. The next room was a kitchen, and everything was put away as neat as you please, except for a few dishes in the sink and one on the counter. All had a thick covering of mold where the food had been, long ago. 

Further exploration of the home did indeed reveal it to be abandoned, not that they needed the confirmation. The mold had pretty much convinced them of it. 

There were three bedrooms and a toilet, and a few odd rooms here and there. No one was there, and the whole place was in a sad shape of disrepair. "But..." Wilykit said,. "Everything 's here, and we haven't found, well, a body or anything - " 

"Wilykit!" 

"Well we haven't! So...I mean they didn't move out. Where are the people that lived here?" She frowned, looking unnerved, and Wilykat bit his lip. 

"Let's go check some of the other buildings," he said. 

Wilykit nodded. "Okay." 

Their exploration revealed only more of the same. The twins snuck into several of the buildings on the outskirts and found them all in similar states of disarray. Whoever had lived there had somewhat primitive technology, almost like that of the Thundera of years ago! "Look at that," Wilykat said in fascination. he was pointing to a vehicle parked outside one of the houses. "That's an airship! It hovers on air, not anti-gravity!" 

"How do you know that?" Wilykit asked him, 

"I read all the time, you know that...I love ships and stuff..." he inspected it and was disappointed that it was quite out of power. "These are antiques on Thundera.. .er they _were_." 

"Weird." There were old computers that didn't work anymore, and any supplies of Thundrillium that might have been there had long since broken down and spoiled the ground or the wood it was being stored in. 

They found a blacksmithing shop, which was dusty and rusty. The twins were fascinated, though, once they finally realized what it was. So different from the ones they saw in books and magazines, which were brightly lit and with the technology they had been using for metalsmithing for decades now. There was a stone floor here, for one, and everything was wood or black iron. And a fire furnace! "Look., it's got blackrock in it," Wilykit said. 

"Yeah...I guess that's how they keep the fire up. Weird!" 

A few of the houses were actually empty, as if the inhabitants had moved out, and for some reason this was comforting to the twins. That was normal, a _rational_ reason for the people who might have lived there to be gone. 

But now they were having a small debate. 

"No way," Wilykat said stubbornly. They'd moved steadily farther towards the misty forest, and now stood facing it, debating whether to investigate some of the houses on the fringes of the forest. Some of the mist was drifting out, making the air damp and somehow stifling. 

"It might tell us something..." but Wilykit did not sound so sure about it, herself. 

"No...that mist isn't natural...I'm not going in it." The boy yawned. "I'm getting kinda tired and hungry, anyway, we forgot to take sandwiches... Come on, Wilykit, let's come back to it another day. Maybe bring some flashlights to help us see in there." 

"Well...all right." Wilykit might have fooled someone else with her "reluctance" to leave, but Wilykat knew her better than that. She was glad of the excuse to leave the forgotten town, at least for a while. They headed back. 

*** 

"So where did you two go today?" Lion-O asked with a boyish grin. 

It was suppertime, and the twins were eating ravenously. Snarf hadn't let them have anything when they'd come back, admonishing them to next time bring lunch or be on time for it, like Tygra had told them to do. So they were a bit disgruntled at him, and now very hungry. "Huh?" Wilykat said, looking up from his bird-leg. 

"I said where did you go? Tygra told me you were off exploring." 

"Eh, we just checked out the hills behind the Lair, to see how far they go." This was something they'd already done, but the ThunderCats didn't know this, and it amde a good alabi of sorts. 

"And?" 

"And what?" 

The young lord laughed. "So how far to they go?" 

"Oh! We don't know. They go waaaay past where Tygra'll let us go alone, since we're just tiny little cubs, not _ThunderCats_ or anything, and might get hurt." Wilykit had cut her brother off to say this, giving Tygra a bit of a glare. 

"That's enough, Wilykit," Cheetara said firmly. 

Wilykit gave her a rebellious look. but didn't say anything. 

The meal continued, mostly in silence. Eventually Tygra began talking of the mission that day, but the twins both paid no heed. "Well...we're gonna go up to our room," Wilykit said, standing up as both she and her brother stood at the same time. 

"All right," Lion-O said. "Make sure you're in bed by ten." 

"Yeah, yeah." Wilykit grumbled and mumbled as she and her brother left the kitchen. "I hate grownups," she said, a scowl on her face as they made their way up to their room. "I mean are we ThunderCats or not? Anyone who can take that kinda responsibility of being a ThunderCat should be treated like a grown up!" She scowled and stuck her tongue out in the direction of the kitchen. 

Wilykat actually laughed. "And then you stick your tongue out." He only snickered as Wilykit socked him in the shoulder. "Oh calm down, jeez. We can go again in a couple of days, maybe after lessons day after tomorrow. They're short that day, only some math and Thunderian." 

Wilykit nodded as she opened the door to her room. "Okay," she said. "Maybe we'll find some answers then." 

Part 3: "Campout" 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	3. Campout

  


3 

"Campout" 

"I hate Thunderian," Wilykit grumbled after their lesson, as she and Wilykat flew towards the Village of Mist. The twins had given it a name. The sun shone brightly once more, and her mane whipped wildly behind her as she flew, but she couldn't bring herself to enjoy it. She was too miffed at her Thunderian lesson. 

Wilykat grinned at her; books and languages and history...those were his good points, and were among the few things he could do better than his sister in. And so naturally he had to be a bit smug. "Well there's nothing wrong with that,' he joked. "I mean it's only our native language and all." 

"Oh shut up, Wilykat...just because you like speaking languages that no one speaks anymore..." she scowled. "It's been years since anyone spoke it, anyway, Basic's a lot easier and well known." 

Wilykat shrugged, the motion making his wobble a bit on his board. "Well it's over with, so don't worry about it. Look, there's the village again." 

"You know what's creepy?" Wilykit said. 

"You mean besides everything?" 

"Well yeah. but I mean...look at how the mist kinda oozes out beyond the forest...then just kinda quits. Is it that dense in there to never let the sun through?" 

"I guess so..." They landed once more. 

"I say we try some of the houses that are partially in the mist...look there. There's just some trees and bushes there over by those houses...I mean we can see, this far out," she hurried on, seeing her brother's expression. She was apprehensive, but had convinced herself she was being a coward, and her curiosity was getting the better of her. "It's not like something can jump out at us or anything." 

"But-I dunno, Wilykit.' Wilykat bit his lip, looking into the gloom. "It's just...it gives me a bad feeling." 

"So what's exploration worth if we don't take risks? Come on, Wilykat, you've fought Mutants and won...and generals, at that! Come on, let's go take a look. If anything scary jumps out at us, I promise we can leave." 

"_If_ we can leave," Wilykat said darkly, but finally he relented and followed his twin into the semi-gloom. 

"Whoa...it's like the sun went behind a cloud..." Wilykat stepped back for a moment, and was in the sun, but the second he stepped back into the tendrils of mist, the sunlight dimmed, and shadows swirled lazily on the ground from the wisps of mist. "It's almost like it's solid..." 

"Yeah... Wilykit said, then shrugged, trying to oust her uneasiness. "Well let's go into that one over there." She pointed to a house that was mostly covered in the sparse mist, and a tiny bit at the back was not visible. Wilykat gulped, but he nodded and followed. 

It was odd. The explorers almost could not tell they had walked inside a dwelling. The mist was here, too, floating around like they were ultra-light streamers floating around in a slight breeze. Experimentally, Wilykat waved his hand through a dense-looking wisp and it parted, but it was very cold. He shivered. "No wonder it's so damp and cold...this mist, it's like ice mist or something." This was one of the homes that had been mostly emptied of its furnishings. Some books here and there stayed, all in the same odd language that Wilykat could have sworn looked familiar. Some papers and things that one might not feel he had to take along were left, along with some of the larger pieces of furniture. 

A big cushy armchair sat next to the indentation in the carpet of a table or a nightstand or something. Wilykit went over to see if it would hold her, but sat up immediately in disgust, looking back over her shoulder at her rear end. "Disgusting.." she said. "It's all moldy and damp." Her tunic had been wet a bit by it and she made a face. "And it smells like old wet rags, too, this couch..." 

"Well you shouldn't have sat in it," Wilykat said, peering into the kitchen. "There's not much in here...just some more mist and some plates and stuff. Looks like whoever was here only took what he thought he'd need." 

"Or she," Wilykit said. 

"Yeah." There was the sound of a door opening, and a cry of dismay from Wilykat. "This poor animal..." He came out looking pale. "Someone's pet's in there... He must've died pretty horribly...how could they have left him there? He was in a little kennel kind of place off the kitchen." He made a gagging sound. "Mostly bones now, but there's still moldering skin on him." 

"Wilykat! That's disgusting." But she too, looked unnerved. "Forget that, Wilykat...come here, I found something." 

It was a map. "Hey...that looks like this planet!" Wilykat said, looking at it closely. "Well part of it, anyway. More than we know, though! Look, here's the Forest of Silence, and the dumb Warrior Maidens' village...the Berbils...and what's this here? There's the ocean that Tygra and Cheetara found the other day! And some stuff the sensors have figured out..." 

Wilykit laughed. "And look...a huge island over here, almost like a continent...and some littler ones...a medium sized one here...look. the big island's marked with some kind of pencil." 

"And that looks like a flight-course," Wilykat added, racing his finger along a dotted line that ran straight from the Forest of Mists to that island. A chill went down his spine. "Wilykit..." he said, his voice a hushed whisper. "Do you get what that means?" 

The girl's eyes widened as indeed she did. "They're there...maybe... Maybe they could tell us what happened here!" 

Wilykat ginned broadly. "It would only take us eight hours or so to get there!" his expression ebcame that of concern. "Not long enough to get there and back in one day, though..." 

Wilykit thought hard. "And we can't ask permission because then they'd know we were out of bounds..." She frowned, lost in thought, and Wilykat swatted at a thick string of mist that drifted between them. Again, it chilled his hand. "Hey!" she said suddenly. making Wilykat jump. "I've got it! Remember that camping trip we took a few weeks ago, right when the Lair was finished and we'd settled in completely? maybe they'd let us do it again..." 

"But what if they checked up on us?" Wilykat said. 

"Well they didn't last time. Come on, let's go ask them if we can do that next weekend! We can bring this map with us." Grinning, Wilykit took the map and stuffed it into her belt. 

Wilykat stood. "You know...it almost seems like I would feel creepy about bringing that into our bedroom...but I dunno. It almost seems like we're rescuing it, bringing it into the light and safety." 

His sister gave him a weird look. "You're strange, Wilykat. it's a *map* Come on, let's get back before they get mad. Then they'll never let us go." 

*** 

It took some convincing, but they did eventually get the permission to go on their trip, and come next weekend, they loaded their spaceboards with the equipment they'd need to "camp". Sleeping bags, dinner, some plates and supplies in a knapsack, and a few tools were strapped to the end. they'd managed to get the adults to let them camp out towards the boundaries of where they were allowed to go, because it would be more exciting that way. They were to return before dark on the next day and report in via communicator. 

The twins readily agreed to this, since the communicators were not traceable (although in time Panthro would remedy that). And so, once again, the kittens set off. 

"Sure hope we don't get into any danger," Wilykat commented. 

Wilykit raised a brow as they sped towards their destination. "Why not? we can handle it." 

"Yeah, but the Sword of Omens always growls and makes a big deal if ThunderCats are in danger, whether they can handle it or not. And it can locate us." 

Wilykit blinked, suddenly alarmed. "I...didn't think of that. but didn't Lion-O also say that if the person didn't _want_ to be found, that it wouldn't find them?" 

The boy frowned. "I don't know... I don't know much about the Eye of Thundera. If we're in danger, it might not matter." 

Wilykit frowned, thinking, and then shook her head. "Well it's too late now. We'll just have to be careful." 

Wilykat nodded, and the twins continued. 

It took a great deal longer than they had anticipated to get where they were doing. Four hours alone getting to the shore. "I wish the was marked," Wilykit complained, scowling at the parchment map. "Then I'd know how far it was. I was only guessing." 

The cool sea breeze chilled them both slightly, and he didn't know about his sister, but Wilykat suddenly felt lonely. He would have liked to be back at the Lair, in his nice warm bedroom, under the blankets with a book. Instead he was looking on the horizon of an unfamiliar ocean, headed for who knew what. 

"Well...let's take a break before we go on," Wilykit said before heading out onto the water. "I think we can make it there by nightfall." I hope, she thought. "Let's eat supper first." Wilykit sat on her hovering board and checked in once more with the Lair, hoping the communicator would not catch the waves, hiding it with her hand to cause a bit of distortion. They'd been checking in regularly, not wanting to be caught. 

Wilykat readily agreed, and they dined on a good sized ration of jerky and dried fruits, and Wilykat felt better once he'd eaten and drunk of the water they'd brought along. 

Seawater was undrinkable on this planet, Lion-O had told them all as much. It wouldn't poison them, but wouldn't keep them from dying of thirst, either. The funny thing was that the streams that fed it were pure...and then were suddenly salt once they hit the sea. 

Now what kind of thing was that supposed to be? 

Wilykat thought about this oddity as he finished his meal and half of the fresh water he had brought. When they were both finished, they packed their things on their boards once more. "These bags are waterproof, right?" Wilykat asked, his voice shaking a bit with excitement and nervousness. 

"Yeah..." 

"And these boards can go over water." 

"Yeah, we tested them that one time, remember?" 

"Right... Well. I hope we don't fall." He knew how to swim, but somehow leaving the safety of the land made him extremely uneasy. How long would they be riding over blank, featureless, endless water? 

The boy shook his head to rid himself of these thoughts. He kept thinking that, he'd never go. 

It wasn't as bad as he'd thought. It made him a bit dizzy, to see so much water, but he'd remedied that by sitting down on his board. Wilykit snickered at him but he didn't care much, at lest he didn't feel disoriented. 

After about five hours of ceaseless flying, Wilykit was even getting tired. "We getting close, even?" she asked, consulting the compass once more. It would be bad to get lost out on the ocean, or worse, stranded. 

Wilykat, who had the map at the moment, slowed down to look at it., "Hey.." he said, looking out at a rock a good deal to their left. "I think so...look ahead! I mean I know it's almost dark, but look for it...it should be straight ahead!" 

Wilykit squinted her eyes, then shook her head. "No...but let's keep going." After a half hour more, thought, the twins _could_ see it. Their feline eyes caught sight of it as the last rays of sun began to fade. both stopped their boards and looked, their faces nearly identical pictures of horror. 

What they had expected, based on the map, to be a tropical island filled with trees and even wildlife was a barren, black landscape of nothing but smooth ground, and nearly blended in with the darkening waters. Rocks jutted here and there, looming threateningly in the dim light. It wasn't even quite the right shape, Wilykat thought in horror, as part of it seemed to have broken off into the ocean. 

Something terrible had happened. 

Part 4: Evolution 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	4. Evolution

  


4 

Evolution 

They stared for a full three minutes, at least, at what should have been a place that was full of life. "Wh-what happened?" Wilykit said, her voice a whisper. 

"I...I dunno Wilykit...there's nothing alive on this island though. Let's - let's just go." 

But Wilykit was shaking her head and looked very unhappy. "Wilykat, it's nearly dark. I-I don't think we'd get far. Or we'd get lost or stranded." 

"I don't care, Wilykit!" Wilykat sounded like he was on the verge of panic. "Something...something terrible happened here, the whole place's destroyed! I can't-I can't land here!" 

Wilykit frowned and looked at her brother; moved her board over to where she could look him right in the face. "Wilykat. Listen to me. Whatever happened here, it happened a long time ago, it won't hurt us. There's nothing here that can." But even as she said it, there was a piercing cry overhead, and a largish bird was silhouetted against the last brave ray of Sol before it flew into shadows. Wilykit tried to ignore it. "You're a ThunderCat, Wilykat, you can handle this. Come on, we can camp here a few hours and leave when it gets light." With that, the young Thunderian brought her board down and jumped off onto the sand. 

It happened that it wasn't sand at all, but solid, fused rock. Making a face, Wilykit rolled out her bag and grumbled about having seen metal slabs softer than this. After a long moment, Wilykat's bag was unrolled alongside hers. 

It was a long, bad night. They both ended up in the same bag, clutching each other in fright as the sounds of the sea and the odd birds that flew around in the marine environments kept them jumping every three seconds. A few hours before dawn, they did manage to get some sleep, but were not very amiable in the morning. 

They did make their way back in the early evening and professed both their weariness and their appetites. They were just in time for supper, and the adults all asked how their trip was, and what they did and where they went. They said something about the Unicorn Forest, way off towards the west end of it, where they hadn't gone yet. As they'd checked in every so often, no one doubted their story. 

They went to bed early. 

It was a few weeks before the twins went again to the Forest of Mists. They had been quite unnerved by their last investigation of the mystery, and wanted a little normal life for a while. Of course, there was a battle with the miserable Mutants, who decided that day would be a good time to rid themselves of their new enemies, and attacked the Lair. So much for normal life. 

It was quite satisfying, however, as the ThunderCats won with little effort. 

But when they did go again, they had made a decision; this time they would be doing in. 

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Wilykat asked for the tenth time as the twins stood by the building they'd found the map in. They were peering into the gloom. 

"No..." Wilykit said, also for the tenth time. "But let's do it anyways. Got your flashlight?" 

Wilykat nodded. "Yeah." Holding each others' hands, the kittens crept into the forest. 

The first thing they noticed was how abysmally dark it was inside. Nearly the only light was from their own flashlights, and as they crept deeper inside, they began to see phosphorescent plants now and then that sent off on eerie glow. "You look like a panther in that weird light," Wilykat whispered, looking at his sister's face. 

"You too." They both giggled nervously, and trekked on. "Make sure you keep your compass ready...I don't wanna get lost." 

It was like nothing they'd ever seen before in their lives. As they walked on, the ground became more and more muddy, sucking at their boots as they walked. The more observant Wilykat noticed it first. "Wilykit," he whispered after about twenty minutes. "Wilykit...this mist isn't really mist!" He was shivering by now, as the cold mist was all around them. 

Wilykit wrinkled her nose. "Well whatever it is, is stinks." The mist had an odd, acrid smell to it. 

"Yeah...that's another thing I don't think makes it mist. Look..." He crouched down, and shoved a clump of mud aside. A tendril of the fog swirled up from the hole and joined the rest. "It's more like...swamp gas! It's not a forest, it's swampland! That's why everything was so damp." 

Wilykit blinked. "Swampland..." That did make sense, but the trees were so tall! Unlike any swamp she'd ever studied. And so dense, and thick. "I thought swamplands were always warm." 

"Yeah me too. But we're on a different planet, Wilykit. Or maybe something weird caused this, a magical accident, or something like that. Maybe someone's magical weapon got out of hand." 

All of a sudden Wilykit gasped. Jumping about a mile in the air, Wilykat spun around to see what had alarmed her. She was staring at a little lizard creature sitting on branch of one of the misshapen trees, peering at them. But no, it wasn't a lizard, most lizards could not survive in such a chilly place for too long. Wilykat frowned and got a closer look; it had fur. Fur, and eyes big enough to cover most of its head. "Now that's weird..." Wilykat said. 

"Adapted for the dark, I guess..." They stared at the creature for a moment before a noise behind them made them spin around once more. 

There stood another creature, but this one seemed to be much more of an immediate threat than the little furry lizard creature. Huge, gleaming, yellow eyes narrowed themselves at the twins, and it growled deep in its throat. Three of four little ones ringed it, their own huge eyes peering warily at the twins. The things had pointed ears and thick fur, and ran rather awkwardly on all fours. Wilykit stared. "Um." For once that seemed to be all she could think of to utter. 

The creature replied by snarling at her, and both kittens took a step backwards. Wilykat put up his hands in a placating gesture. "N-now... it's okay...we're not gonna hurt your babies... We're just gonna go nice and slow no--" but he never got a chance to finish, because the thing jumped on him. 

Wilykit screamed as her brother was leapt on, and jumped on the creature's back, but it easily batted her off with its long, clawed paws. Shaking her head, Wilykit growled herself and got out a couple of pellets. Her normal smoke pellets would be of little use here, she realized, and then an idea dawned on her. Light! As big as these things' eyes were, it probably didn't like light! 

Frantically searching for one on her belt, she winced as her brother screamed, when the creature sank its teeth into his arm. "Aha! Found it! Back off you stupid thing!!" she cried, darting forward and hurling two of them at the cat. 

It howled, and closed its eyes, its head shaking back and forth. Wilykit kicked out at it, and it retreated, making a whimpering sound as it kept shaking its head. The little ones scampered after it, looking decidedly less awkward as they ran. "Oh jeez...oh man, Wilykat..." Wilykit knelt by her brother, but he was already sitting up, clutching his arm to his chest. She helped him up. "Hurry...before that thing comes to its senses!" 

With Wilykit helping him, the twins ran for what they remembered the edge of the forest being...and ran into the sun. 

They were able to come up with a convincing enough story. After all, the Unicorn Forest was highly unexplored, and even Snarf had seen wild, dangerous looking things in it. And the mud was easily enough explained. Of course it had taken some convincing to keep the ThunderCats from forbidding them to go there again. After all, they'd fought off the beast without causing it undue harm, and gotten back safely. Shouldn't that prove they could handle themselves? Lion-O reluctantly agreed that it did. But until Wilykat's arm had healed, they were to stay around the Lair. 

"It looked like a cat," Wilykat said to their lord, as he watched Tygra bind up the bite marks. They'd been checked for disease or infection, and there had been none. "Ow, that hurt!" 

"Sorry, Wilykat," Tygra said. "A cat? A feral one?" 

"Really?" Lion-O's eyebrows rose. 

"Not like us though," Wilykit said. "More like Kano." Tygra had insisted on looking her over too, but she had nothing more than a couple of bruises and scrapes from being thrown into the bushes. "Well and he was kinda more canine, wasn't he?" She couldn't quite remember, but Lion-O nodded. "It was like..." She sighed in frustration. 

"Wait!" Wilykat looked at Tygra. "You remember those animals we found in those old ruins? I mean the book we found there? A creature of this planet form eons ago? Those wild feline things?" 

Tygra nodded. "The ones that we think we might have been related to. The feral cats." 

"It was like one o those, but mutated...I guess from living...so long." he'd almost said "in the swamp" but had caught himself. 

"Hmm," Lion-O said. "Maybe we'll send a coupe of people out to check it out." He held up a hand. "No, I want you two to rest for a few days." He chuckled. "You did quite enough in discovering the creatures. 

Deciding not to press their luck further, they agreed. 

Part 5: Book Lessons 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	5. Book Lessons

  


5 

Book Lessons 

A week later, the twins were back up in their room, this time with a couple of stacks of books, the ones that were not so brittle that they couldn't be read without disintegrating. They'd gone back and brought the lot of them back. Wilykat still insisted that there was something familiar about the writing and printing, and wanted to check a few things out. They also had some old books from the ruins they had mentioned to Tygra about the languages of this world. 

"I like this one," Wilykit said. She was holding an ancient language book from the ruins, and read aloud a few awkward phrases. "It kinda sound like our old language...Swa-hilly it says." 

Wilykat blinked at her, and then grabbed one of the books from the Village of Mist, and paged through it again, his eyes wide with excitement. "Wilykit!" he exclaimed. "Oh, wow, check this out!" he shoved the book over to Wilykit and then got one of his lesson books down off its shelf. He paged through a few of the chapters beyond his bookmark, and then just stood and stared at one particular page. He sat down hard on the floor. 

"What?" Wilykit said, frowning and taking the book form him. "That...Wilykat, that's our Thunderian book..." She stared at him for a moment. "You don't think..." 

"It is! Oh man, it is, Wilykit! Look here..." Wilykit pointed out the new chapter that they had only started the week before. "It's in Thunderian! The old alphabet! That's why we didn't know it right away, we hadn't started the chapter yet!" 

"Then how could you have recognized it?" Wilykit demanded. 

"You know I always look ahead in our lessons...especially the languages and history and stuff." he looked at the assortment of books they had between them. "By Jaga, Wilykit, that means that this was a village of our kind! Maybe...maybe those wild cats we read about were what we evolved from!" 

Wilykit looked floored. "May-maybe... but how old were those ruins? I mean Cheetara says that this planet isn't that old... I think Thundera is a lot older. How could we have evolved form them if they haven't been around as long?" 

Wilykat shook his head. "I don't know. But Thunderian hasn't been used a lot on Thundera for like a hundred and fifty years...and it's been over 300 since it was the only language used! I remember reading that when the new king took reign, he changed the way they did things, they allowed trade with other systems; he wasn't so stuck up. He let people use the Basic language." 

"Which we all use now because it's easier." Wilykit sat back. "Wow... But the thing is, did they come here first, or did our people come from here and go there? It'd have to be from a long time ago, though, since everything was in Thunderian." 

"I dunno...maybe..." Wilykat laughed. "Maybe there's a history book here!" 

"If we found something like that...I'd think it was put there on purpose by someone," Wilykit said. but her brother wasn't listening to her, he was looking excitedly back and forth between his lessonbook and the old books they'd brought from the village. 

"Maybe not," he said with a grin, and held one of the old books up. "You know what this is, Wilykit? It's a journal! Someone's journal! Maybe it will give us some answers!" 

Looking excited, Wilykit sat next to her brother to begin puzzling it out. 

It took them days to translate it all, using their lessonbooks and what they'd learned. Wilykat had a grasp on the old language far better than Wilykit, else they may never have gotten it translated. As they went, they became more and more fascinated...and more and more horrified as they read. 

Restrin, of the warm season. 

"That's the old dating system, we don't even _use_ that anymore!" 

"Yeah." 

Well, today is our first day in our new home. The elders have set up camp near what looks to be a steaming jungle, very well suited for our kind. We have found remnants of previous inhabitants here, that seem to have been wiped put by some kind of terrible devastation. 

"So they did come here from Thundera!" 

"You know, I think this date is like a thousand years ago, maybe even two thousand," Wilykit whispered. "Regular people had been able to own spaecraft for only like 500 years. Only the governemtn had them before then, and even at this date only the very rich had their own...and they weren't very good, either. That was when we were first at war with those Plundaarian jerks." 

"You _do_ pay attention to the history lessons!" Wilykat exclaimed ith exxaggerated wonder. His sister slugged him. 

I wonder if anyone has been told yet of this project. There was a good amount of controversy, as people thought it too dangerous, and too risky. To send so many people out, maybe into death? Certainly into the unknown. But the king decided that he would allow it, and his people built their ship, the fastest that could be made. 

It took three generations to arrive here. Many children grew up and died knowing nothing but the living ship that we used to travel. I myself was born on the ship, and this planet fascinates me. Only from books had I seen anything like it, and the images from the probes sent long ago. Although procreation was strictly monitored, the ship began to get overcrowded. Fortunately, we were close to our destination. 

The creatures from our world were set free, once it was deemed that it was safe enough to do so. Those that survived. Amazingly, similar creatures were found here, although we had quite a few new ones. We had thought this planet, Second Earth, was similar to ours but we had no idea how similar. One big difference, though, the sun is so light! And the sky so blue. Never was there such color on Thundera, not in the books, or from my grandfather's stories. And to watch the children play in the grass and the trees, it is a wonderful sight. 

"Well that's kinda creepy," Wilykat said. 

"W-well.." Wilykat said. "They said that they'd camped near a steaming jungle, like the old rainforests. The Forest of Mists is anything but steamy-- hold on a second... 'Second' Earth?? how old _is_ this village?" 

"I think the date is a couple of thousand years, like I said. We've had space craft for thousands of years, and look how long they said it took them to get here! Generations! How long ago do you think it would have to be for it to take that long? I mean it only took us a few years, five or six or something like that." 

"And they didn't have stasis." 

They read on. 

Most entries seemed to be about normal life, but some were amusing, and some exciting. They'd met all kinds of interesting creatures and some proved more dangerous than others. They'd met the Berbils, and made alliances with them, and towards the back of the book, mention was made of creatures that sounded a lot like the Wollos. 

"No Bolkins or Warrior Maidens," Wilykit said. 

"They live pretty far away," Wilykat said. "Maybe they never got that far in their exploring." 

On the fourth day, they reached the end of the diary. They never figured out just who it was that had written the diary, but the last entry chilled them both. 

Today something horrifying happened. The gods themselves came down on us from the skies to punish us for our sins. Giant creatures like this or any other known world has never seen before wreaked their havoc, giant beasts, with eyes of red, rampaging through the villages. A great figure in the sky, like a giant bat, who spewed electricity from his very fingertips. There are reports from all over the place of great magical cataclysms, and plagues that killed in seconds... I hide now in the basement of my home, waiting for the gods to strike me down too. I do not know that I will see tomorrow. 

The twins looked at other in shock, and exclaimed in unison. "Mumm-Ra!" 

Part 6: Battle and Revelations 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	6. Battle and Revelations

  


6 

Battle and Revelations 

Months after this discovery, a cry went through the Control room of the Lair. "That blasted mummy!" These words were all the warning that the rest of the Lair received before a barrage of fireballs began striking the lair, and rocking the whole fortress. 

It had been three months since Wilykit and Wilykat had gone to the village near the Forest of Mists, as they'd been far too spooked to go back. They'd hidden the books in one of the many secret compartments in their bedroom, and taken a break. 

But apparently, the lair was under attack by the creature, Mumm-Ra, who'd they'd met only twice before, and who seemed to think that he ruled over the people. The ThunderCats (and most of Third Earth) felt otherwise, and Mumm-Ra somehow thought this was the ThunderCats' fault, and so had been determined to kill them since the beginning. 

The twins ran into the control room to find it in a state of disorganization. Panthro was running out, just as the twins ran in, with Cheetara and Tygra close behind. "We're taking the 'Tank!" he yelled over his shoulder to Lion-O, how nodded briefly. 

Lion-O was at a weapons console, and returning fire with some fireballs of his own from the lair's defenses. "Twins!" he exclaimed. "Take a console! Wilykit, you're the better shot, take the other lasers, Wilykat, make sure our shields stay up and running!" He knew more about mechanics, anyway. 

With hardly more than a nod, the twins took their stations, suddenly warriors instead of children, at least for the time being. 

At first, they seemed to be holding the mummy at bay, even though he could fly, and was deftly avoiding most of their attacks. But then the Mutants arrived to help! They heard the warning from the ThunderTank, Panthro's voice sounded angry. "Mutants!" he snarled. "Be ready, they've got...some kind of flying craft!" 

"Will do Panthro, be careful," came Lion-O's reply. He looked at the twins. "I may have to go outside and help with the Sword of Omens, kittens. You two stay inside and keep up the fire." 

He was right. Not too long after S-S-Slithe and his subordinates joined the battle, the ThunderTank's crew sent a call for help, as they were being mobbed. Growling, Lion-O ran out, the Sword of Omens drawn and in his hands. 

And the twins kept firing. 

Just then, the fighters were beginning to tire, the Lair got a message form the ThunderTank. It was Tygra. "Twins, be careful. Mumm-Ra has disappeared, and we're not sure where he's gone." 

"Will do, Tygra," Wilykat responded. It wasn't a minute later before an amused chuckle was heard behind them. 

The twins spun around to see the frightening figure of Mumm-Ra, in full battle form, his unnatural red eyes narrowed down at them. "And so they leave the babes in command of the stronghold," he rumbled. "That only makes things easier for me." 

The twins gaped for a moment, and then Wilykit bristled about being called a baby. "We are _not_ babes, We're ThunderCats, you big bonebag!" 

Mumm-Ra's eyes flashed redder for a moment, and then he laughed. "Such spirit for someone to tiny!" he mocked, his grotesque mouth twisting in a mockery of amusement. He raised his hands suddenly and sent a jolt of electricity at the pair that stood before him. Agilely, they leapt out of the way, crouching down in fighting positions on either side of the undead creature. 

"It was you, wasn;t it?" Wilykit said, narrowing her own eyes. 

Mildly interested, Mumm-Ra turned his head to look at her. When Wilykat took the opportunity to try and attack, Mumm-Ra zapped him without even looking; barely avoiding the full brunt of the blow, Wilykat took a graze and sprawled on the floor. 

Wilykit gasped and looked to ehr brother, who signalled that he was all right. When she was sure her brother was not badly hurt, Wilykit turned back to Mumm-Ra. "You were the one that turned Second Earth into Third Earth!" 

Mumm-Ra looked very surprised. "Clever kitten," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "And how might you have come across this information?" 

"I read a journal," Wilykit said with a defiant tilt of her chin. She watched as Mumm-Ra's eyes narrowed once more and continued. "Why?" she demanded. "Why did you kill all those people. Spew all that magic...destroy so much?" 

Mumm-Ra laughed, then, a horrible sound without sanity or humanity. "Control, child! When people advance too far, when they get too populated...it is then a ruler loses his control over his servants..." he smiled wider at Wilykit's look of horror and then he suddenly realized something. "So you discovered the old Thunderian village, then?" he chuckled. "There are none still alive, you know. Well not that you'd recognize, at any rate. it's really too bad...that was a nice island." he sighed with mock regret. "Amazing what a few hundred meteorites can do to so many beings of flesh." 

Wilykit gasped. Island...did he mean the one that she and Wilykat had found, destroyed? Black and burnt? "Y-you killed them!" she said, sounding horrified. "And they had no bases, no protection!" Before Mumm-Ra could even answer, Wilykit snarled and lunged at him, her capsules forgotten, at the mummy. Her claws extended, she growled as she collided with her powerful adversary, but she did hardly more than make him sway a bit as he rose an inch into the air. Cackling loudly in amusement, he took her with one hand by the scruff of her neck and threw her against the door. 

For a moment, Wilykit lay stunned on the floor, her eyes crossing. That had hurt! Okay...now she was mad! She hissed and stood again, wincing as a pain in her side let her know that she'd made a stupid move. but the Mummy's laughter was so infuriating! 

She pulled a capsule of light and broke it at Mumm-Ra's feet, blinding him for a split second while she tossed anther one, a dragon-capsule. Mumm-Ra had never seen quite such a thing before, such an illusion of puppetry and illusion. Thinking it real, he snarled in surprise and unleashed his lighting at it. 

The dragon roared, shot fire...and then slowly began to deflate as Mumm-Ra bombarded it. 

In the meanwhile Wilykat was on the radio with Panthro and telling him frantically that Mumm-Ra was _here_ and that they needed help, and that Mumm-Ra was a jerk! Wilykit was getting ready her next weapons, as Mumm-Ra suddenly growled low, and turned slowly to face Wilykit. He was angry at having been deceived so easily by a mere child. 

As he brought his hand up to let loose with his deadly electricity, Wilykit leapt and snapped out her lariat like a whip, smacking the mummy right in the face. He yelped in pained surprise while Wilykit threw yet another dragon-capsule at him. it provided at least a shield, a distraction. 

Wilykat now rejoined thew fight, tossing a few pellets into the air, and breaking them with his own lariat. hordes of tiny biting insects swarmed Mumm-Ra, and he was getting mad. 

The twins were lucky that Lion-O arrived just then with the powerful Sword of Omens, else they might have died that day. The Mutants had been driven back after one of them was shot down by Cheetara's excellent marksmanship, and the others were not far behind. 

Mumm-Ra finally took wing, with a curse in a language so ancient than only he and the spirits knew it, and vowed they'd not seen the last of him. Panting, Wilykat picked himself up off the floor, where he usually seemed to end up when everyone fought. And sore! "That miserable jerk!" he said, tucking his capsules away. He scowled and kicked the dragon's pump-valve and it deflated, and the insects had followed Mumm-Ra out of the lair. 

"Are you two all right?" Tygra asked, pushing forward while Panthro went to examine the damage to the computer consoles. Some stray bolts had fried a few circuits. 

"Yeah," Wilykit said with a wince She lifted up her tunic to reveal a dark, spreading bruise on her side where she'd hit the door. "That hurts, though...boy, have I got things I owe Mumm-Ra! Like a few dozen knuckles!" 

Cheetara laughed quietly and put a hand on Wilykat's shoulders, looking over him at the angry girl. "I think he might be regretting attacking you two, thinking you were helpless," she said, and ruffled the boy's hair. 

"Ow," he said, scowling at her and rubbing his head. "Great...I found _another_ ow!" 

"Come on then...let's go up to sickbay. Come on Lion-O, yes, even the Lord of the ThunderCats needs to have his injuries tended." Lion-O did not protest too much as he was led upstairs. 

*** 

"Lion-O?" Wilykit asked, once Tygra was done and declared that he wanted a full day of rest for all of them and some good cooking. Snarf was in the middle of seeing to that last order. 

"Yes, Kit?" 

"Mumm-Ra said something about Thunderians being here before..." she said cautiously. It wasn't an exact lie. He had mentioned them. "Were there ever any other settlements here from Thundera? Like a really long time ago maybe?" 

"Yeah, since the bag of bones never seems to die," Wilykat muttered. he had a few bandages on his fur from burn marks, and wasn't happy. He hated bandages. He scowled, holding out his arms out disgustedly "Look at this, I _look_ like him!" 

Wilykit giggled. "Maybe you should try to take over the world, too," she said 

"Oh shut up." 

"Anyway..." Wilykit looked back at Lion-O to see what he would say. 

Having been amused at the twins' bantering, he now looked serious once more. "I don't know for sure, Wilykit. Remember I know so little about Thundera. You two remember more than I do." It had always been a sore point. but they had all figured that his rapid rate of accelerated age had been the reason for his loss of memory, his mind was still adjusting to its rapid development. "But...it does seem that I have heard of groups being sent out a long time ago to see if they could make it to other planets. long before we knew of most of them." 

"Oh..." Wilykit frowned and looked down at her plate. "That's creepy... I guess that's how they knew of this place?" 

Lion-O considered. "Maybe," he said. "It _has_ been on our star charts for a long time now, but it's so remote that no one had reason to go there." 

Wilykit nodded and went back to her food. But she'd decided that it was time for another visit to the Village of Mists. 

Part 7: Sentience 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	7. Sentience

  


7 

Sentience 

A week or so after this battle, when Wilykit's ribs didn't hurt so much and Wilykat's bandages were off, the two went back to the forest. The air was a bit chilly, as it was autumn, and the skies threatened rain. but weather was never much of a deterrent for the two wily kittens, and the umbrellas that Snarf had insisted they bring sat unused, strapped to the ends of their spaceboards. 

As they approached the village, Wilykat suddenly slowed, and frowned. Noticing, his sister also slowed to match his pace. "What?" 

"The village..." he said. "It seems different. Look! That mist that was creeping over most of the village..." 

Wilykit squinted and flew slowly forward. They her eyes opened wide. "It's out more! It's covering more of the town!" It was true, too. In the weeks the twins had not gone there, the mist had slowly crept further from the forest, and more of the buildings in the abandoned town had been engulfed in its smothering embrace. 

"I don't like it," Wilykat said uneasily. "And look...I don't remember al that underbrush being there, it-it's like the forest's expanding or something." 

Wilykit and Wilykat were now right up near where they usually landed, but neither was getting down off their boards. "Maybe it is," Wilykit said softly, gazing into the mist. "That...maybe that's why they started leaving, because the forest was slowly creeping into the village, like it was reclaiming the land or something." 

Wilykat shivered in the cool air. "Wilykit, don't say things like that! You're gonna make me never want to come here again." He already didn't want to come here, but the curiosity was stronger at the moment than the fear. There was a silence, and then he sighed. "Okay...let's go in. I-I guess we should start looking in the houses that were more in the forest." 

"Yeah." 

It was not so bad at the very first, as although the mist was everywhere, and the grasses and undergrowth was spreading, the houses were still intact, and it was clearly not a part of the main forest. Yet. But the farther in they went, the more and more the greenery was dominant. "Th-this is the last I go to," Wilykat declared, looking nervously at a house that was half covered in a light green ivy. Part of it was so obscured in fog that it was invisible from where they stood, and there were parts that were crumbling off to be covered in grasses and tangled roots. 

His sister didn't contradict him, as she was feeling pretty touchy herself. Hand in hand they crept closer to the house, and from where they now walked they could see others behind this one. Others that were mostly, and then completely covered with vines and ivy, and where the trees and grasses were growing around it. A few had broken windows, where a branch had grown or fallen, and Wilykit shuddered to think that the woods wee creeping _inside_ the home as well. 

There were areas in this home that the twins had to avoid, because the floor was crumbling too much for them to want to risk it. But it did not matter much, because this was one of the homes that had been abandoned and there was little to look at. There were things here, some books and things, furniture, but most of the essentials were gone. 

"Guess whoever lived here took everything with them," Wilykit mused, looked at the desolate rooms. "The house isn't that big to begin with though...and there's not a lot of stuff here. It looks like just one person might have lived here." 

Wilykat nodded. "Only one bedroom, you're probably right." The boy said, glancing into a bedroom with broken floorboards at its door. He was looking over the books, hoping to find some that he could read. But so far into the forest, most of them were so damp that they crumbled when he tried to pick them up. Of course "crumbled" was a bad word, it indicated lack of moisture. Squelched might have worked better, because the sodden pages on some of the volumes were pulp rather than pages, and slimy with decay. "That's disgusting," Wilykat complained when he tried to handle a book and the it left gooey pieces of itself on Wilykat's fingers. Fighting an urge to gag, he wiped it off on a set of curtains. But these were moldy also and did little in the way of cleaning. 

Wilykit was peering into the kitchen, and suddenly yelped. Looking up in alarm, Wilykat ran to see if she was all right. The girl nodded. "Yeah...I'm okay...it's just that a chunk of wood fell down my tunic when I stepped through the door." She was in the process of taking the clothing off and shaking it vigorously as she spoke. 

The little chunk of wood seemed to be moving in the odd light of the cabin, and when they looked closer, they were both disgusted to see that it was. Tiny insects, the likes of which neither had ever seen, crawled about within. "Oh man, Wilykat, are there any in my fur?" 

Normally Wilykat would have laughed at Wilykit's squeamishness, but he felt much the same way. He looked carefully, brushing off the loose bits of wood and few of the bugs. "Not anymore," he said, his lip curled. 

Shaken, Wilykit put her tunic back on, making sure it also was bug-free, as Wilykat ventured a little farther into the kitchen. This room was far towards the back of the house, and Wilykat could not see the back half of it, except in little bursts of clear air. The window was broken in and rotting around the edges, and there were the vines they had seen o the outside creeping in. As Wilykat watched, one of them twitched, and he caught a glimpse of it through the mist. 

Her eyes widening, Wilykit caught her brother's arm. "Don't go in there!' she cried, staring hauntedly at the room. "Don't...don't touch that mist...look what it's doing to the house! It's like it's eating it alive!" 

That a house could not be alive made no difference, Wilykat knew exactly what she meant. The boy shuddered, and drew back. "I...don't think it'd hurt me...I mean we went _in_ the forest." He swallowed hard. "But you're right, I don't want to look at it anymore." He shook his head. "Did you look in the bedroom?" 

Wilykit shook her head. "No, there'd a big open place in the floor...I guess it goes down into the cellar. I don't even _want_ to go into the cellar..." 

"Me neither...let's see if we can't get in the room without doing that, though." 

The gap was not too wide, only long, and the twins saw that they should be able to leap it easily enough. Wilykat went first, and the floor creaked in protest when he landed, even as light as he was. He watched anxiously as his sister went next, having a bad feeling down in his gut, too late to stop her from jumping. 

He had not been in error. As he began to lunge forward, the girl landed, and screamed in alarm aw her foot broke through the rotten floor, and through the ceiling of the lower level. Wilykat's eyes popped wide open and he ran to her, stopping a foot away so he didn't send her crashing down. He grabbed her arm as she frantically used the other one to push herself up. Her other leg was still above the floor, and had it been nearly anyone else it likely would have been broken from being forced in such a position. But the young felines were very flexible. 

Still, she winced upon putting weight on it when she was finally extracted from the hole. And then she looked at it. Her thigh, almost all the way up, was covered in whitish-gray beetle things with bulging eyes...they lived between the floor and the ceiling below. She screamed in revulsion and began slapping at the to get them off of her. Wilykat grabbed a blanket form the bed and began brushing them off as well. When they were gone, both twins instinctively grabbed each other around the waist and stood there shaking for several minutes. 

"Let's go," Wilykat said in a small horrified voice. 

But after a moment, Wilykit shook her head and stood straight up, disentangling herself from Wilykat's grasp. "No," she said, her voice shaking but resolute. "If I'm gonna go through all that I'm gonna have a look through the room." 

Wilykat nodded. He admired his sister's bravery often, he just didn't admit it. Not always, anyway. He looked around the room, seeing little but the furniture (which he supposed might have been too heavy to take) and a few items of clothing scattered on the floor. But then his eye happened on something at the far end of the room, near the window. This one was closed, but the vines covered it, and the mist swirled against the glass. It almost seems mad, Wilykat thought. Mad that it can't get in. He gulped and hurried over there to pick up what he had seen, and to hurry back with it. 

The item ended up being the only book left in the place that was still readable, and he saw why when he had it in his hands. It was covered tightly with some kind of plastic wrapping. 

"What's that?" Wilykit asked. 

"It's a book...that someone sealed up...I wonder if it was just forgotten." Wilykat frowned. "I mean if someone's gonna go through all the trouble to protect it like this, it;s probably somehting important." 

Wilykit looked around nervously. "Let's find out at the Lair, I want out of this creepy place." 

The boy nodded. They were a bit reluctant to make the jump across the hole again, but if they didn't they'd be stuck, and the thought made them both shudder. But they both made it without crashing through, although the floor creaked again, Wilykit said they'd been dumb to even go in there, as old as it was. The whole floor could have collapsed, and they could be trapped there under the rubble, in the cellar that probably hadn't seen sunlight for hundreds of years. 

Almost as she said this, there was a shattering of glass in the bedroom. The twins both cried out and looked back, their eyes wide with terror, and Wilykat knew that the forest had managed to finally destroy its obstacle. They ran. 

Both young explorers were out of breath when they got back to the Lair, but they entered their room from the back, and used the stairs rather than the lifts. Once there, they sat on Wilykat's bed and looked eagerly at the book. Wilykit jumped up to get some scissors to cut the heavy plastic the book had been protected with while her brother reached under the bed for his Thunderian book. 

After taking a few moments to rid the book of its sleeve (which took longer than they expected), they opened the book to see a very neat, legible script in the Thunderian alphabet. It seemed slightly different also, some of the letters written in a altered style "I bet she's a teacher," Wilykit said. 

Wilykat frowned. "Who?" 

"The woman who wrote this diary." Wilykit grinned. "Only teachers ever have this neat of a handwriting." 

Wilykat laughed. "It might not even be a 'she'," he said to her, opening his Thunderian book. "Okay, let's get this thing translated." 

Wilykit nodded. "Okay...this one is...oh it _is_ a guy. It's a man's name, anyway. Lynx-O. He must have been there towards the last. The date is hundreds of years after that last journal." She paused, and then laughed as Wilykat turned the page. "No wonder the letters are weird. Tygra should be happy. This is really helping with my Thunderian." 

This one did not take nearly so long to translate. At the end of the night, the book lay closed on Wilykat's bed, and both twins felt stunned. "Lynx-O" had written only events in his life that were important to him, not everyday life, which would account for the brevity of the journal. There were a few good things in there that made the twins smile. The birth of a bengal friend's baby, born perfectly normal. A little neighbor child, a little cougar that he was almost a grandfather to coming over to visit for a couple of days from the other side of the village. A few amusing occurrences that Lynx-O deemed interesting enough to write down. 

But those that were not light-hearted were very dark indeed. 

The first was five pages in. 

The warriors are getting worse. Every day it seems like they become more and more aggressive. There are more and more reports of them harassing, sometimes even striking villagers, and yesterday the leader of the hunting party nearly beat a man senseless for accidentally walking into him. The village council disciplined him of course, but that did not change the fact that the poor man had to stay in the healer's clinic for nearly three days and was many more healing. The scientists of the village are trying very hard to see why they have changed so much. There are rumors around the village that the forest is changing them, that there is some kind of evil spirits inside. It may sounds like superstitious nonsense, but there seems to be little else in the way of explanation. 

The next such entry was dated three weeks after that. 

Today was the last straw for the elder council. Jagrr, the hunter leader, struck a little girl today, when he and his men came back with their meat. Apparently the cub had done no more wrong than asking them what they had caught. Jagrr snarled and struck her with his fist. The cub was only four years old, and he broke her nose. He seemed about to strike her further when one of the adults living on the street saw and intervened. Jagrr has been exiled from the village, and left the village cursing. He fled into the mist woods. The talk of evil in the forest has caught the interest of the elders, and they have had the scientists and students of the village out studying it. 

"Man, what a jerk!" Wilykit exclaimed. "Big man, hitting a little kid!" 

Wilykat nodded and read on. 

A day later was this: 

There has been talk of leaving the village and finding a safer place. The scientists of course say that this is a rash move, and that we should not go through the trouble and trial of moving until they had something conclusive about the forest. Those who want to leave argue that it may be months or even years until they figure out what it wrong with the forest, and we all could be raving lunatics by then. My opinions tend to run with those who wish to leave. A large group of us have been speaking for a while now of breaking off on our own and moving to start over. 

A week after that: 

There was a great crashing in the woods tonight, while most of the village was asleep. I was awake, feeling too uneasy that night to sleep, and I myself saw a great meteor in the sky, falling right for the forest. Two hunters out in a party were killed instantly, and two more came back with horrible burns all over their bodies. The rest were unharmed, and had to carry the injured ones back. I asked to be a part of a party that went to investigate the site of the meteor, and my request was granted. I almost wish I had not gone. The meteorite was not large, but had killed everything within twenty yards of it. The trees had been burned black, although I guessed that the mist kept them from catching fire. There were twisted, charred bodied of the poor creatures caught in the blast zone. Many of us took ill after being so close to the cursed thing. It was made of pure Thundranium. 

"Thundranium!" the twins exclaimed together. Wilykit shuddered. "Nasty." 

The last chilling entry of the journal was dated almost a month and a half after the meteorite crash. The light-hearted entries dwindled greatly since then, as the children had been kept inside more and more often by their worried parents, and even grown men did not venture out often. 

We leave today. The elders did not want us "abandoning" the village, and a few of the Hunters have actually tried to physically "persuade" us from going. But we leave, anyway. Today they saw Jagrr again, after all these months, but he was nearly unrecognizable. He was nude, and filthy. His mane had grown over his face, giving him the look of a wild man, and he crouched on all fours like a small child. He raged into the town and killed two citizens, ranting in a snarling voice that we were intruders and needed to be culled, before the warriors came and put him down. They killed him. 

I will leave this diary here so that someone finding our town might know what has happened, and be warned. I believe in my heart that this town is doomed, and even if it is not, it has been hurt and soured beyond salvation by the evil mists of the forest. The scientists don't even come back anymore from the forest half the time, for days on end. 

I will be traveling in a hover car with little Pumyra and her parents, and the bengals that live down the road from us...and hopefully it is not too late for us. 

I will pray that it is not. 

ThunderStrike, Wilykat turned to his sister, his face radiating sheer horror. "W-Wilykit...that creature that attacked me in the forest..." he swallowed hard. "It was Thunderian!" 

Part 8: Thundranium 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	8. Thundranium

  


8 

Thundranium 

"No." Wilykit shook her head. "That can't be, Wilykat... I mean... if that was so, then they'd have been like that long before that big group left the village." 

"It's the only thing that makes sense! Their paws, Wilykit...didn't you see how long the 'toes' were? They weren't toes, they were fingers. I mean... That Lynx-O talked about the forest affecting everyone badly. And it was Mumm-Ra's magic that messed up the forest, and it's been slowly taking over the town. Look at all the abandoned houses, Wilykit! The people just...eventually stopped living in them entirely and took to the forest." 

Wilykit scowled and stood up. "But why all of a sudden? Huh? At they rate they were doing it shoulda taken a lot longer than that! Long enough for them to realize it before it completely took them over, at least!" 

Wilykat frowned, thinking about this She did have a point. It had been a sudden, very violent change if he was right. Then his eyes widened. "Wilykit...remember that meteorite that he wrote about? The one of pure Thundranium? So strong and pure it made some of the hunters sick just being near it for a few seconds?" She nodded slowly. "I wonder what kinda effect it had on the forest. Maybe it intensified everything, made everything mutate more quickly...like...like radioactive...something or another..." That would explain everything, wouldn't it? 

Wilykit looked unnerved. "I...I suppose. I mean I guess it could. You know more bout that kind of thing than me," she admitted. Wilykat thought that that was a rare, and pleasant occurrence, her admitting he knew more about something than she did. But he couldn't bring hismelf to enjoy it right then. 

"Well, there's one way we might find out," Wilykat said hesitantly. 

"What's that?" 

"Look for the blasted thing." 

And so it happened that a day later, the twins once again were heading for the Forest of Mists. Their belts were full of light capsules, and a few exploding ones, in case they met up with any more of the creatures, which were even more awful if their suspicious were correct. 

Wilykit had protested this idea, but then the idea of her brother showing her up in the courage department spurred her to finally agree to go along with him. And so they would enter the forest once more. 

It took nearly the whole day to find it, skulking around in the chilling mists until they were both actually soaked from the moisture. It smelled bad too, almost sulphurous. Their flashlights only gave them a tiny bit of illumination, but Wilykat had thought ahead. He had brought a fire pellet along, and made a make-shift torch out of a dead branch and some scrub brush. Although it took a while to coax the dampened tinder to burn, this was somewhat more effective, as it drove off the mist for a couple of feet. At least they did not feel so hemmed in, breathing the unnatural gasses. 

Finally they did find the spot that was described as being where the meteorite had hit. And they felt it long before they saw it. Both recognized the draining sensation of being around Thundranium, and with it nowhere in sight yet! It must be strong indeed. And Thundranium unfortunately did not dwindle in potency after time. 

When they did happen upon it, they knew it. The chunk of glowing red rock was a bit difficult to overlook in the middle of the oppressive gloom. There was no mist for a radius of fifteen yards around it, and the Thunderkittens stopped when they entered this radius. They stared at it and backed off enough that they did not feel their knees wanting to buckle. They already felt like they'd been forced to run for three days straight. 

"Look..." Wilykat said in horror. She was holding onto a nearby tree for support. 

There was no grass, no underbrush directly near the meteorite, instead was scorched, black soil. It was spoiled that no living thing could exist in it, and it was like that for several yards. Half buried in the sand, the meteorite gave off its sick, dull red glow. But that wasn't the worst of it. 

Once the vegetation did begin again, there was nothing that Wilykit or Wilykat could recognize as being a tree or a bush. Black, twisted things, some pulsated with an unnatural parody of breath, and some merely grew along the ground like some kind of vile ivy. There was some that were a sickly yellow, and grew up tall and abnormally thin. Their twisted leaves oozed something that looked like pus, and smelled horribly like rot. 

Appalled, the twins could do no more than stare, until Wilykat finally whispered, "W-w-we'd better go... The...the Thundranium..." 

At that moment, a noise to their left made both twins spin around. Wilykat stumbled and fell, and to be helped up by his sister; if one of the feline creatures were to attack them now... It had been stupid to get so close. 

But it wasn't one of the creatures. Instead what stood before them was something that might have been a squirrel or a rat at one time, but like the feline, its eyes were twice the size they should have been, and it seemed to be covered in boils. But then one of the "boils" blinked, and Wilykit and Wilykat could see that they were not boils but malformed eyes. 

They ran. 

When they got back to the Lair, at the point of collapse, they both crept up to their rooms and stripped themselves of their wet clothing. Shivering, they piled them into a bag that they intended to burn later that night when everyone else was asleep. They flipped a coin for who would shower first, and Wilykat won. 

They skipped supper, which neither felt much like eating, and when the others asked them what was wrong, Wilykit told them that they had been feeling sick all day, that maybe they'd gotten a stomach bug or something. Snarf had felt their foreheads and brought up some soup, which they both gratefully ate. 

They went to bed early. 

The next morning, Wilykit and Wilykat decided that they would not go back again. Wilykat was right; he had to be. That creature that had attacked them had been Thunderian at one point. Was the whole village in the forest now, then? Had the meteorite so badly changed the woods that they degenerated that quickly into something less than Thunderian? 

From what they'd seen of the trees and that poor squirrel creature...yes, that was likely so. It had changed the chemistry of the swamp-like place somehow., that it affected the villagers, even those that never went into the forest proper. 

And now it was taking over. 

Wilykat worried about what effects it might have already had on him and Wilykit, but his sister was doubtful. "We only went in a couple of times, and in the village a few more. We don't live there or anything, and we didn;t eat anything from the woods. I think we're all right." But even she hadn't seemed so certain. 

They also debated telling the adults about it, but that would have meant telling them what they had been doing, and they were reluctant to do so. It was not hurting anything so far, and they would probably investigate it in time. "I mean, if we noticed something weird, I'm sure they will," Wilykit said. "We haven't even mapped out a tenth of this world yet." 

"True," Wilykat had agreed, and the adults went untold. 

*** 

Weeks later, on an island in the middle of the ocean, two men spoke to each other. "I believe it's the day to set off our transmitter," the elder of the two said. 

"Oh...what's the use?" the younger said bitterly. "It's not as if anyone will find it. We've done this how many times now? In the first week, continuously, from what you told me. And no one came." 

"And yet what have we to lose?" the elder asked calmly, smiling a bit. 

The younger growled. "I suppose," he said sullenly, and went off to set it up once more. 

*** 

"That's odd," Cheetara murmured to herself, gazing at the computer monitor in front of her. A signal had just appeared on it, weak, but steady. "Only Panthro and Lion-O are out, and Snarf...and I didn't think that they were doing that far." Frowning yet deeper, she grabbed the radio microphone from the nearby console and switched it to their frequency. "This is Cheetara at the Cats' Lair," she spoke into it. "Do you read?" 

"Yeah I read," Panthro said, then snickered. "Novels, mostly." 

"Oh very funny, Panthro," Cheetara said, but she had smiled. "Where are you?" 

"We're cruising on the outskirts of the Unicorn Forest," came the reply. "Been thinking that the twins might not have been entirely truthful about where they'd gotten those bite marks. Lion-O and I haven't been able to find one, yet." 

"Hmmmm. Well I am receiving a distress signal," she told them. "It's got a signature that I recognize." 

"Really?" Panthro sounded a bit uneasy. "Mutant?" 

"No. Thunderian." 

Part 9: Excursion 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	9. Excursion

  


9 

Excursion 

"Thunderian?" came the surprised reply. "What do you mean?" 

"I mean it's Thunderian. But Panthro, it's a signature from a model of beacon that I have only seen in museums, unless your computer is messing up again." She hadn't meant to sound quite as rude as she'd ended up sounding, but they had not quite yet worked all the bugs out of the computers. 

"Oh thanks a lot, Cheetara." 

"Sorry, it came out a bit wrong. But this information can't possibly be right, that's what makes me think that." 

The next voice she heard was Lion-O's. "Hold on, Cheetara, we're heading back. Panthro can check out the computers. Where does it say it's coming from?" 

"A little island way out to sea," she said to them. She gave them a set of coordinates. 

"Hmmm. All right, we'll be there in fifteen minutes or so. Lion-O out." 

"Cheetara out." As she set the radio down, she looked up as the twins walked in. "Hello kittens. What are you up to today?" 

"Nothing much," Wilykat said. "Just snitching some cookies while Snarf's not in the kitchen.' He grinned, finishing the last of the stolen cookie. 

Cheetara frowned. "Wilykat, shame on you." But he could tell she wasn't mad. 

Wilykit's eyes were attracted by the flashing indicator. "Hey what's that?" she asked, pointing, and coming closer to look. "It looks like a distress signal; are the others in trouble?" 

"No, Wilykit," Cheetara said, shaking her head. "That's just it. I just got off the radio with Lion-O and Panthro, and they're headed back. This signal is Thunderian." 

Stunned, Wilykit looked at the flashing again...and suddenly realized that she recognized that location. It was the little island a hundred or so miles from the blasted ruins they'd gone to that one night when they were supposed to be camping. The one that the Thunderians had gone to. The one that Mumm-Ra destroyed. 

Wilykat, too, realized where it was, but his surprise was a bit more controlled. He only frowned. 

"I know," Cheetara said. "I didn't believe it, either. I think the computers might be messing up, so Panthro's; coming back to tear it apart and check it out." 

"Huh..." Wilykit said, finally reigning in her surprise. "You're probably right. Come on, Wilykat, let's go get some more cookies." She nearly dragged her brother out of the room. 

"Don't spoil your appetites!" Cheetara called. 

Back in their room, Wilykit paced excitedly. "Wilykat!' she said. "What if...what if some of those Thunderians didn't land on that island? What if someone went to the smaller island we saw, the one the signal's coming from! There might be more of us here!" 

Wilykat frowned a bit. "But what if...what if they're like the ones in the forest?" 

Wilykit shook her head. "No, they wouldn't be, or they wouldn't know how to use a distress beacon! And besides, didn't Lynx-O's journal say that they were leaving, like a week after the entry about the meteorite?" 

Wilykat looked a bit startled. "It did..." he whispered. "Maybe they _are_ there!" 

"I wonder if the other ThunderCats are doing to check it out." 

"If so, we're going with them!" 

*** 

Not long afterwards, Panthro, Lion-O, and Snarf came back, and Panthro looked displeased. He had spent enough time on that computer system to last him a lifetime, and he would not be happy if it was malfunctioning again. When the twins came back into the control room, they saw the amusing sight of Panthro's rear end sticking out from beneath the computer screens, the panel that usually covered it lying on the floor nearby. "Um, hi, Panthro," Wilykat said with a grin. 

Wilykit giggled. "You mean Panthro's - " but she was cut off by her brother's hand clamping over her mouth. They didn't need to be causing trouble now, else they might not be allowed to go with the adults if they went to investigate. 

Cheetara gave them a disapproving look, but even Wilykat had to giggle. "Um," he said. "So what's wrong with it, Panthro?" he asked. 

The panther growled, backing out of the recess and looking disgruntled. "Nothing," he said shortly. "Not a blasted thing. That signal, whatever it is, is genuine." 

"Maybe it's a Mutant trick," Tygra suggested. He too had come up to see what was doing on. 

"Maybe," Lion-O said, tapping his hand against the hilt of his weapon. "It might be someone who had a similar signal. As old as this would have to be to be Thunderian..." 

Wilykit rolled her eyes. Adults were completely paranoid sometimes. 

"We'll have to investigate it," Tygra said. "There's plenty of daylight left." 

"The problem is, how do we get there?" This was Lion-O, frowning in thought. "We haven't completed the Feliner yet, and the ThunderTank can't handle water." 

"Well that'll be fixed soon," Panthro muttered. It was ridiculous, being landlocked. 

"But that does us no good for today," Tygra mused. 

Wilykit spoke up. "Well, our spaceboards go on water,' she said. 

Lion-O frowned, looking at her. "How do you know?" he asked. 

Wilykat spoke up, saving the situation. "We've tried it out in the stream in the unicorn Forest," he said. "They don't even sink or anything." 

Panthro spoke up. "No," he said. "You two are not doing there by yourself. That miserable S-S-Slithe could be there waiting in ambush. You two need to stay here where it's safe." 

Wilykit growled, clenching her fists. Why couldn't Panthro take them seriously! Of all of them, he was the worst! He never treated them as equals. Never. 

"Well I don't have too much of an objection to them coming along," Lion-O said. "It would be pretty mean-spirited if we took their boards and said they had to stay behind. But I agree they should not go alone. Their boards will support an adult, won't they?" 

"Well yes..." 

"And this once it would be all right if they rode double?" 

Panthro shot the twins a look, then glanced back to Lion-O. "Well I guess, but Lion-O, they're just kids." 

The young lord smiled. "They're ThunderCats." 

Panthro didn't have anything to say to that, and the twins could have cheered Lion-O. But they didn't, they only tried to look mature and composed. After the remark about saying hello to Panthro's backside it wasn't easy. 

"Besides. how are they to learn, Panthro? You can't keep them cooped up all the time," Cheetara said reasonably. 

"Yeah, well..." he grumbled but argued no more. 

"Who will go with them then?" Tygra asked. 

Lion-O looked at the Sword of Omens. "Well I suppose it should be me, especially since I can send a signal out with the Sw--well no because you wouldn't; be able to get to me. but still, it's the most powerful weapon we've got. And as Lord I probably should be the one to greet them, whoever they are." He had been trying to sound less pompous and arrogant, and winced a bit as he wpoke this. But no one said anything of it. 

"True, and if anything seems fishy you can always leave. it's not like the Mutants have vehicles that go on water yet either. I don't think." Tygra scratched the fur on his neck, a sure sign he was a bit tense. 

Lion-O nodded. "All right then, it's settled. Panthro, you can take us to the shoreline in the Tank, and wait while we make sure the boards will work over the deeper water." The twins exchanged a surreptitious smile at this. "And then we'll head out and keep in contact." 

"Great!" Wilykat said with a grin. "I'll go make sure they're fueled up and in working order, and stuff. Come on, Wilykit." The twins left the room eagerly. 

A half an hour later, both boards had a pack of supplies strapped to its back end, and they were stored in the Tank's back compartment. Panthro was silent as he drove the trio to the water's edge, and they all got out. Wilykat pushed around some of the sand with his foot and was rather pleased when it stuck together in the shape he's made. This would be a great place to play, he thought. 

"All right, twins, let's see how these boards of yours work on the ocean. You've got your life vests on?" That was one thing Tygra had insisted on, was that they wear life jackets in case they fell in. The ocean was not something to trifle with. 

"Yep!" they chorused, identical grins on their faces. 

"Then let's go!" Lion-o was a little wobbly on the unfamiliar boards, but soon gained his balance as the board started to move. he discovered what the twins already knew; that they powered just fine on the water, and waved back to Panthro. "All right, kittens, let's head out! Hoooo!" he cried, and started off. 

The twins echoed the call, and then giggled as Lion-O nearly fell upon accelerating, but soon they were off, and the boards, each with a load of ThunderCat, began to move from the shore. 

Part 10: Last Colony 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	10. Last Colony

  


10 

Last Colony 

It was a long, long way out. It seemed that as they had not yet explored this area yet, except by their sensors, they had underestimated the time it would take to get out thee by spaceboard. They had been flying now for five hours, and were all growing weary. In fact, Wilykat had already fallen off once, to the startlement of Lion-O and amusement of his sister. He made sure to give her a big hug when she helped fish him soaking wet out of the water. That in itself had been a challenge, getting back onto a floating object. 

Eventually they'd had to camp on a tiny island that was little more than a round beach. They'd eaten, and slept, and both twins agreed that it was far better than the spoiled, blasted island they'd camped on not too long ago. 

In the morning, they set off once more, refreshed and eager for adventure. Even Lion-O, whose mind had not yet really had the chance to grow into his body. 

"Conkolor!" The young man, who had been lying in the sun near the water in what might be the last warm day of the autumn, was suddenly sitting bolt upright, brushing sand from his white shag of hair. "Come here, quick!" 

Frowning, she joined him and squinted her almond-shaped eyes. "What is it? Or what are they?" she corrected as she could see that there was more than one object flying their way. 

"I-I don't know. Some kind of hoverbike? But they're riding too high!" 

"Let's get the catapults ready," Conkolor said, running towards a series of primitive, wooden catapults, each armed with a large boulder from the rocky side of the beach. 

"Look!" Wilykit pointed excitedly, looking at the printout of the map that Panthro had given them. Wilykat had just finished checking in with him once more, telling them they were off schedule, but doing just fine. He'd left out the part about falling ingloriously into the water. 

"I see it, Wilykit. Now, we must be cautious, as it may still be a Mutant trap. oOr perhaps that...Mumm-Ra's doing. Panthro actually came up with another possibility, that some wreckage of our ship managed to land here and is malfunctioning, sending out random signals." 

"But Cheetara said they were form a device too old to be one of ours!" Wilykat protested. 

"Well that's true," Lion-O said. "That may be part of the malfunction, though." 

They had little time to say anymore, as one of them, startled, heard a shout in the distance, a heavily accented male voice calling, "Launch!" And a second later, a whizzing sound, and a large object coming right at them. 

"Look out!" Lion-O yelled, moving to shove the twins out of the way, into the water if need be, but they were nimble and used to working in tandem. As one, they ducked, and swerved to the right, as the boulder narrowly missed them and splashed into the water. All three ended up getting drenched, and the twins almost ended up in the water anyway, but after a moment, they regain their balance. Watchful now, and beginning to think that Panthro was right about the Mutants, they looked back at the island. 

"Halt!" the voice called from the island. 

"What kind of Mutant it _that_?" Wilykit asked, pointing at the little figure on the island. Her eyes had picked out a pure-white blur, which was who seemed to be speaking to them, and was trying to think of a Mutant species that was pure white. 

"I dunno," the boy said, frowning. He looked up as Lion-O spoke. 

"We come in peace!" he called back to them formally. "I am Lion-O, Lord of the ThunderCats! We come in response to your distress beacon!" Tensed, the trio waited for another boulder to come whizzing their way. 

But it did not happen. There was nothing but silence for a long time, and then the voice calling back, "Go ahead and proceed!" he called back, sounding suspicious. "But be warned, we're well armed!" 

"Acknowledged!" the young lord turned to the twins. "Come on, kids, let's go. Go slowly, and make no threatening gestures. But do be ready to fight if need be." 

"Got it," they said together, and they proceeded. 

As they got closer, their keen eyes could no longer deny what they were seeing; three Thunderians stood on the shores. Could Mumm-Ra make such illusions? Lion-O felt that he could not, or if he could, that these were not of his creation. 

"They're Thunderians!" Wilykit exclaimed, almost as the female on the beach said the same thing, and with much the same tone of amazement. 

"And look at the vehicles they ride on,." the young man on the land said, sounding awed. "Like hovercraft, but only to stand on...amazing! And so swift!" 

Lion-O jumped down from his board, gesturing for the twins to do the same. There was a white tiger, what looked like a cougar, and an elderly Thunderian standing behind them, his eyes closed. The younger ones were armed with spears, but the elder held nothing. 

As the Thunderkittens dismounted, Lion-O hailed them with the traditional Thunderian salute, and it was cautiously returned by the two younger cats. At least they had not attacked yet. 

"I am Lion-O," Lion-O repeated. "I am the current Lord of the ThunderCats. We got your call for distress, and came to investigate. This is Wilykit and Wilykat, also ThunderCats." The two waved, then at Lion-O's stern glance, also saluted, Wilykit rolling her eyes, She did not much care for formalities. 

"Hello," they said in unison. 

"They are very young," the elder said, turning his head and frowning a bit. As Lion-O looked closer, he realized that the lynx's closed eyes were not just closed, but seared shut, and somewhat scarred. Blind then...he had been blinded somehow, and long ago, it looked like. 

"They have proven themselves," Lion-o said simply, which made the cubs swell up a bit with pride. Not often did they hear that. 

"I am Conkolor," the puma said. 

"And I, Tipu," the white tiger said. 

"I am Khandensis,' the lynx offered. "In Basic, as you seem to know it well, we are Pumyra, Bengali, and Lynx-O." 

The kittens gaped at him for a moment and then looked excitedly at each other. Lynx-O! The one whose diary they'd found! But hadn't he been doing with the others to the bigger island? How had they gotten here? Had the twins been right in guessing that some changed course? They looked back, their expressions now more of excitement than wariness. They knew now without a doubt this was no trap. 

Before anyone else could say anything, Bengali's eyes happened on the Sword that was sheathed at Lion-O's side. "The Sword! Lynx-O, he carries the Sword of Omens!": 

The lynx smiled. "Then he is, indeed, who he says he is." The spears, which were never exactly pointed at them, but not exactly in a non-threatening position, came all the way down at these words, and everyone relaxed. 

"Please, join us," said Pumyra, backing up a little bit to gesture at the island. There was a great deal of beach, with a stand of trees not too great a distance back. "We've a dwelling in the woods back a ways. Where have you come from? The last we knew, Lord Taian, Oceldron, was Lord of the ThunderCats." 

Wilykat blinked as the trio made their way up the beach. "But...that was hundreds of years ago! More than a thousand!" 

Bengali chuckled. "Well we did not know, personally. But that's what the histories say. We have no lord, really, here. Only a town mayor." He sighed. "I wonder how they have fared, al this time." 

Lion-O was shaking his head, looking somewhat confused. "I...I have so many questions to ask you," he said to them. "How did you get here? I hadn't thought anyone else had survived the Mutant attacks." 

"Mutants?" Pumyra's voice was puzzled. "We were attacked by no one," she said. "We left our village. Don't you know why?" She gave Lion-O a puzzled look. 

"If this young man wields the Sword of Omens," Lynx said as they walked into the trees. "Then they do not know about us. I do not believe they are descendants of those that made the journey here generations ago." 

At these words, Pumyra and Bengali regarded Lion-O with something like awe. "Then..." Bengali said. "You must have come from Thundera later? how _much_ later? When was the date?" 

Before Lion-O could answer, Lynx-O chuckled. "Bengali, calm yourself. Give our guests a chance to rest first. With such vehicles as you described, they must be very weary from making such a long journey. let us have something to eat and drink, and then we can exchange stories." 

"Rowl....all right," the young tiger grumbled. He could not be more than twenty, Lion-O realized, but then who was he to talk? He wasn't that much older. 

Lion-O and the twins were led to a rather sturdy looking cabin made of wood and vines, and cemented with some kind of clear, resinous sap. The wood was light in color, and it stood in a kind of natural clearing that gave it a warm, homey feel. Wilykit and Wilykat liked it immediately, and Lion-O nodded in approval. "You've built this yourself?" he said. "With no more than natural tools?" 

Lynx-O smiled. "Yes," he said. "And it has stood now for twenty years. Please, come in, we will get some meat ready to cook." 

As they entered, Wilykit exchanged a rather nervous look with her brother. If they were to exchange stories... They had a feeling that Lynx-O's group didn't know where the others were, and did not know that Mumm-Ra had killed the most of them. And it was not right to leave them in the dark, was it? But if they told, they would have to admit to Lion-O what they had done. 

Faced with this decision, they stepped inside. 

Part 11: Palaver 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	11. Palaver

  


11 

Palaver 

"According to our records," Lynx-O began, in the low, gripping voice of a born storyteller, "we came here approximately three thousand years ago." He turned his face towards Lion-O. Already the visitors could tell that he had an uncanny sense of hearing, no doubt having developed to make up for his loss of sight. "Might I ask what the date is, in your Basic dating system?" 

Lion-O told him the date. 

Lynx-O nodded and thought for a moment. "Then three thousand, one hundred or so. See, we have learned the Basic ways from the Berbils, or so our predecessors did." He shook his head sadly. "The cataclysm that shook the world planet-wide affected the Berbils such as they forgot their long-standing alliance with us. It damaged their memory banks and also affected the natrual parts of their minds. Only a few remembered, like the two that came with us here to this island." 

"Where are they?" Wilykit asked. 

"Sadly, they did not survive the crash." He held up a hand, as Wilykit began to ask what crash he meant. "Please, you will know everything, if you allow me to tell our story." He spoke kindly, and Wilykit was not offended. 

"Sorry," she said, and sat back to listen. 

The six Thunderians were seated in a simple, comfortable living room, in chairs of wicker and a kind of soft moss that Bengali had found and explained made excellent cushions. Wilykat seemed to agree, as he was half curled up in a wicker chair with high sides, in a "nest" of the stuff. 

"Unfortunately, many of our records were lost, or stayed behind, and we don't have them here, else I could show you. We had camped very near a tropical environment, a water-woods." Lion-O raised his eyebrows at this archaic term for the rainforest, "And we decided that the fields nearby would make an excellent site to make our village." 

"Why did your ancestors come here to begin with?" Wilykat asked curiously. "I mean, did something happen on Thundera?" 

The lynx smiled at him. "No, young ThunderCat. They were originally part of a project set by the royal staff to explore other planets in the system. Until then, only probes had been sent to other systems, and they had just then gotten the information by this planet, that it was indeed habitable. By then, their ships had gotten faster, and they were able to build one large enough to support many, many people, and special rooms for crop building and water recycling. And of course the production of oxygen. 

"And so, a large group was chosen to come here." Lynx-O sipped a cup of a delicious herb tea that Lion-O was also partaking of. The twins had some juice. "According to the histories, a thousand and a half years ago, there was a terrible catastrophe, as I have said. Reports of a demon coming from the sky and setting his magics and anger upon the people and the lands, changing it forever. Many died, and many yet were crippled or affected as a people, such as the Berbils. 

"Mumm-Ra," Wilykit muttered. Lion-O frowned, and then remembered what Wilykit had said the undead being had told her in the attack on the Lair, and nodded darkly. 

"How did you know that?" Bengali asked with a frown. He of course had heard of the creature, but only half believed it, even though Lynx-O swore him to exist. 

"We will tell out own tales also," Lion-O said, nodding respectfully to Lynx-O. "Please, continue." 

Bengali looked somewhat put out, but didn't quite dare argue with the lion who held the Sword of Omens. Lynx-O continued. "After that, the forest had nearly been destroyed. Many of the plants and animals that we used for food had been killed or mutated so badly that we could no longer use them, and the very ground had been changed. Reduced to a vile cover of must and mold, releasing gasses into the air that hung like something solid. Once warm, the forest turned chilly and damp. 

"We did eventually adapt, to find things that we could consume from this forest, and there were scouts going out to find other hunting grounds as well. And for a while, things seemed all right. 

"Soon, though, some of the scientists began to notice things. Birth defects were rising more than they had in a long time. The children lived, but many had deformities such as misshapen limbs, or senses that did not work correctly. Some were born deaf, a few blind." He almost unconsciously ran in hand over his own sightless eyes. "We were birthing many more throwbacks and ferals that we have ever seen." 

"We knew a cub in school back on Thundera that was a throwback," Wilykat said with a scowl. "And everyone teased him. He was always so unhappy. That always made me mad that they teased him." 

Lynx-O nodded. ""Things of that nature were not so prevalent here in this village. We were smaller, and people knew each other much better than in the big cities of Thundera. Some feared the defects were caused by inbreeding, but we were quite numerous enough, and diverse enough that that was ruled out. As there were no explantions for what happened, people began saying that there was magic in the forest, that was making such thing happen, but the scientists scoffed at this. I believe those superstitious rumors were closer to the truth. 

"The cataclysm did something to the forest so long ago, soured it, mutated its nature and its beings. We'd been eating food we'd hunted down in this forest, and the hunters went there everyday, and pretty soon they too began to show changes. They became more violent, slowly, and as the generations went, it happened more and more. They became feared, rather than respected for their jobs." 

"And then...a meteorite of pure Thundranium landed in the forest, and caused illness among our people. A large group of us had already decided that we would leave, and set off with what belongings that we could, headed for an island that our scouts had discovered in the sea." 

The twins both winced as Lynx-O mentioned this, but were silent, at least for the moment. Wilykit glanced at her brother. He looked like he wanted to crawl under a bed, by his expression. Somehow it was easier to treat the incident as a story when it was written down on paper. To listen to its author, before only a whisper from the past, speaking of the things he had written about. 

"Except it had stormed that night," Pumyra said, shivering. "I was only six, but I remember that. I remember the cries, and the thunder, and the waves..." She shook her head. "That's one of my first memories." 

"Yes," Lynx-O said. "There was a horrible storm that night, and we were blown off course by several miles, and became lost. Our supplies had almost been depleted by the time we spotted this island and headed for it." He sighed heavily and paused for a moment. 

"But..." Wilykat said. "Why didn't you just use your vehicle to join the others after you'd gotten some supplies?" They eagerly listened to this, as this was the part they did not know; what happened after Lynx-O and his group had left the town. 

"We had planned to," Lynx-O said. "But the storm had damaged our ship greatly, and just how extensive the damage was was not noticed until it was too late. There was an explosion in the ship that destroyed the most of it." Lynx-O touched his eyes once more. "That is how I was blinded. Bengali's mother was killed instantly, as was Pumyra's father." He lowered his head sadly as Pumyra bit her lip. "Her mother survived long enough to make it to the island, but without medical supplies, I could do nothing for her. Pumyra and Bengali had been sleeping in the other side of the craft, and so had only taken minor injuries, which I was able to tend." 

"We...we had no vehicle to get back with," Pumyra said. "And no communications with those that had gone onto the island we'd planned on doing to in the first place." She gestured to a device in the middle of the room, which looked rusted and old. "All we had was this distress beacon, and we could only use it so long. And so we began doing it in intermittent bursts, trying to save its power source." 

Bengali grinned at Lion-O. "And I told Lynx-O it was a waste of time, and am completely glad to admit I was completely wrong." 

"So," Lynx-O said. "You are not from the colony that we were separated from. How did you find us, then? Have they sent settlers since? We lost contact with Thundera long, long ago." 

Lion-O shook his head, all of a sudden realizing that these people didn't know about Thundera. He closed his eyes and sighed. "No, Lynx-O. We did not come to find this colony. I knew nothing about it. We...we came here because it was the closest habitable planet. We..." He faltered, not sure how to go about this. "Lynx-O...Thundera is no more." 

Pumyra gasped, and Bengali stared. Lynx-O only bowed his head, as if in thought. "You're joking," Bengali accused. "There's no way there could be no more Thundera! I mean whole planets don't just disappear!" 

"I'm afraid so, Bengali," Lion-O said. "No one knows what happened. But the most popular theory was that it began to slip its orbit. Hundreds, maybe thousands of us escaped in a mass exodus from Thundera." He narrowed his eyes. "But the Mutants, whom we were at war with, attacked...and killed many of us. The royal flagship escaped, but we were damaged. And we ended up here." 

There was silence for a moment. Pumyra had begun to weep silently, her eyes closed, but Bengali seemed to be gearing up for a rebellious outburst, refusing to believe this terrible news. 

Lynx-O quieted him with a simple statement. "I feel he is telling the truth." The old man's intuition had never failed them before, and both Bengali and Pumyra had learned throughout their lives to trust it. the young tiger stared at Lynx-O for a moment then sank back in his seat. 

The twins watched solemnly. 

"I am sorry to have had to bring you this news," Lion-O said quietly. "We thought we were all that was left." 

"Only you and the children here?" Lynx-O asked quietly. 

Lion-O shook his head. "No, my friend, there are more of us. One of the Snarfs of the Valley of the Snarfs is with us, and the rest of the nobles of the time. There are three others here on Third Earth." 

"We've only been here a few months," Wilykat spoke up. 

"Then you know nothing of the colony," Lynx-O said. "Or of the village." He frowned, troubled. "I fear that they may no longer exist. As I said, the meteorite had been making people ill." 

"But the colony, Lynx-O?" Lion-O said. "Can you tell me where it was? How many others were there, there may be more Thunderians that I had thought!" It was odd, though,. these Thunderians were almost an anachronism. They had been living at a level of technology here from two thousand years ago. What would they think of the flying machines, and spacecraft that could go fast enough to reach a neighboring planet in a few hours? 

"There are some maps back at the village," Lynx-O said, sounding excited now. "I disremember the coordinates, it has been twenty years, and most of our belongings on the hovercraft were also destroyed." 

"Where is the village?" Lion-O asked, also looking very eager. "We can take you there, or find someone maybe that is still there with a hovercraft that can transport us all back there." 

Wilykit sighed heavily and looked at her brother, who nodded reluctantly. Wilykit looked back at the adults, who seemed to almost have forgotten them. "It's on the edge of the Forest of Mists," she said, before Lynx-O could answer. 

She was being ignored no longer. This time, every head in the room turned to her. 

Part 12: Confessions 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	12. Confessions

  


12 

Confessions 

"Is that what you have called it?" Lynx-O asked, his voice mildly curious. 

But Lion-o was looking far more suspicious. "And how would you know that?" he asked them. "Have you and Wilykat been going into that forest?" 

"Well..." Wilykat said. "Not exactly..." He fidgeted in his chair. 

"The village is on the far side," Wilykit said, resisting the urge to squirm. "You guys haven't checked that area out yet." 

Lion-O narrowed his eyes. The twins were looking guilty as sin, and he had the suspicion that they hadn't exactly heeded the rules for their exploration. "And just how would you know this?" he asked, keeping his voice calm. 

"Well..." Wilykat said. "We mighta, kinda, gone past the boundaries Tygra set," he said. He held his fingers about an inch apart. "Just a little bit." 

The young lord gave them both a look that plainly said that they would discuss this in length later, but turned back to Lynx-O, who looked mildly puzzled. "This Forest of Mists..." he said. "Is this where the meteorite landed?" 

"Well, it is more a swamp than a forest," Lynx-o said. "Now, at least. But yes, deep within, it fell." 

"A swamp?" 

"He's right, Lion-O," Wilykat said. "The gasses come out of the grou---" Oops. Okay well he'd messed that one up, too. He winced and tried to give lion-o a winning grin, but it looked kinda sick. 

"So you did go in! Wilykat, do you have any idea how dangerous that was?" 

Wilykat scowled, suddenly angry. "Yes," he said, his voice suddenly a bit cold. "I do. We understand a lot more things than you think we do, Lion-O. And we've found out a lot! We found their old village." He looked at Lynx-O. "We found your diary, lynx-O, the one you left behind." 

He looked surprised. "Really! Then you understand much of what I have told you! Extraordinary." 

Not willing to pursue the argument further in front of their hosts, Lion-O merely growled a bit at the twins then turned back to Lynx-O. "We will help you find the rest of the colony, Lynx-O," he said. "And if any in your village still live - " 

"They don't." This was Wilykit. She and Wilykat were in big trouble already, and she felt that these castaways should know. "Their village is completely deserted and the forest's mostly taken it over." She looked at Lynx-O. "Your house has got vines all over it, and the mist is all inside it... Can't even see the back half of your house. And a vine broke your bedroom window." 

Lynx-O frowned, uneased. "Yes. I once thought that the forest had gained some kind of unnatural sentience. The woodsmen had been very busy clearing the scrubbrush and even sprouting trees from the edges of the villages. We lost one of our crops to a parasitic vine species that had destroyed it." 

Lion-O looked at the twins. "And what of this colony? Do you know anything about it?" 

Wilykit winced, and was very reluctant to say it, especially not after the news about Thundera. "W-well..." she said. "I know what happened to it." Pumyra and Bengali were looking at her with interest, but Lynx-O had sensed the kitten's sorrow, and had slumped back a bit in his chair, dreading the information. 

"They...they've all been killed," Wilykat said, biting his lip. "They were killed by Mumm-Ra." 

This time, Lion-O also looked shocked. "How do you know this?" he asked skeptically. 

"He told me, remember Lion-O? I told you most of what he told me that time. I just kinda, mighta, forgotten to mention the Thunderians part." Wilykit said. 

Her brother spoke. "And we went to the island, found a map in one of the homes that had it marked on it." He gulped. "It was blasted flat, the sand had gotten so hot it'd fused into this smooth rock. There was nothing left living on it." 

"My gods," Pumyra whispered, turning her head away. Wilykat felt bad when he saw there were tears leaking from her eyes. 

"I'm sorry," he said, looking upset. 

Bengali growled, and suddenly stood up. "I don't believe you," he said to Wilykat, and then turned to Lynx-O. "Are we gonna sit here and believe these ridiculous stories from two children? I will not." And with that, he stormed from the cabin. 

Before anything else could be said, Wilykit too ran out of the cabin. Odd, Lion-O thought, for her to be upset enough to run away from something so small. But when he heard her confronting Bengali, he actually almost smiled. That was far more like her. "I'm sorry," he said to Lynx-O. "I had better go out and make sure Wilykit's not starting a fight." 

Pumyra looked angry, and wiped her eyes. She and Lynx-O also stood. "If someone starts a fight, it's likely doing to be Bengali, and just like him to start a fight with a cub, too!' she said. Everyone went outside to where the two angry Thunderians faced each other. 

To one who did not know Wilykit, the picture might have been an amusing one. Bengali was a strong looking young man, and a good deal taller than Wilykit, whose wildcat blood made her even smaller. Thin and wiry, she was facing the tiger spiritedly enough for ten Thunderians, and a flush had tinged her face pink. She was mad. 

"Just watch how you talk to me, cub," Bengali was saying, narrowing his ice-blue eyes at her. "I don't want to hurt you, being a child and all, but if you anger me, I will." 

"Go ahead and try, Bengali!" she said, and Lion-O noticed that he bristled upon the kitten using his familiar name. "I may be a cub, but I know what I saw! Everything else I said went along with what Lynx-O remembers. You were just a baby, how would you even know? _You_ just don't wanna face what's real!" 

"Okay, that's it!" Bengali growled and lunged for the girl. 

Pumyra winced and moved forward, as if to stop him, but Wilykat took hold of her tunic, and said, "It's okay. My sister can handle him, honest." She looked down at him, doubtful. "Trust me. She's kicked Mutants' tails before." 

She stayed put, although it was clear she was reluctant. Lion-O and Lynx-O merely stood side by side and watched (Lynx-O listened) to make sure things did not get out of hand. 

Wilykat was right, though. Bengali was strong, from life of rugged existence and hard work, but he was unskilled in fighting. Wiry and quick, Wilykit had been trained to fight. Seeing his rather clumsy charge, she leapt up nimbly in the air, higher than one would expect someone so small to be able to leap. 

She landed lightly on the ground as Bengali had to stop short to avoid running into a nearby tree. he growled and turned around to face her. There was a moment of tense silence before he lunged at her once more, and she dived at his feet, grabbing them both and refusing to let go until he reached down to throw a punch at her. Then the young ThunderCat released his legs and ducked it, if only barely. "Okay that's it!" she said. "You wanna fight rough?" Crouching on all fours still, she sank her claws into his leg and sent four gouges down his thigh. 

Bengali roared in pain and anger and lunged forward once again, catching the girl by the arm and twisting, Wilykit winced, but was flexible enough to avoid injury. She twisted, throwing herself on the ground as he threw another furious punch, which caught her a glancing blow in the face. She shook her head and caught the arm as it punched at her again, sinking her claws into it, too. 

Lion-O shook his head. "Okay, that's enough," he muttered. They'd had plenty of time for their show of testosterone. And he wasn't even sure if females had any! Knowing the Sword of Omens would not and could not harm a ThunderCat, he aimed it at Wilykit and cried "HOOO!" He willed it to merely knock her away from her opponent. 

Wilykit yelped as the energy beam caught her and sent her sprawling harmlessly to the soft sand, and Lion-O quickly ran to stand between them. "All right," he said. "That's enough. If you two had something to prove, " he looked sternly at both Wilykit and then Bengali, "then you've proven it quite enough." 

Wilykit stood up rubbing her cheek, which was starting to bruise. Her arm also began to show a bruise, but she didn't complain, only glared at Bengali. Wilykat ran over to her and asked her if she was all right. Wilykit nodded. 

Bengali did not stand up quite at first. he was staring at the Sword of Omens as it showed its power. "By Thundera," he whispered. "Lynx-O was right. You must be a descendant of the king!" 

"Actually they changed royal families after you guys left," Wilykat ventured uncertainly. "There was a new ruling body, and has been for a while. Lion-O's the last member of that." 

'Unless he and Cheetara..." Wilykit said very softly to her brother, and didn't need to finish the sentence. She and Wilykat snickered softly, then looked back at Lion-O and Bengali. 

The young man then stood up and looked somewhat abashed. "I'm sorry, my lord," he said, evidently flustered when he realized that he was, in essence, speaking to a king. "I...I guess I didn't believe you. I've only heard about the Sword of Omens in the history books, and fables...I couldn;t ebelive what my eyes told me I guess." 

Lion-O shook his head. "Please, call me Lion-O. Since there are so few of us left, and I'm not so much one for titles, I would rather not go into formalities." He smiled at Bengali. "I'm not offended. I think Wilykit might be the one who's offended." he noticed Bengali's bleeding leg and the trickles of blood on his arm. "If we're going to discover what happened once and for all, we are going to need to work together." 

This time he looked hard at Wilykit, who scowled for a moment and then relented and nodded. "All right," she finally said. 

Lion-O nodded. "Good. Shake hands, you two." He gave Wilykit a hard look. "And there had better be no trick anythings in your hand when you do so, either." 

Wilykat stifled a snicker at this as Wilykit gave her leader a dirty look and stepped forward. Feeling a little odd, she stuck out her hand to Bengali, who took it after a moment, and they shook. 

"All right," Lion-O said, looking to Pumyra, who looked impressed, and Lynx-O who looked merely amused. "Well the first priority is for us to see if Wilykit and Wilykat are correct." He held up a hand as Wilykit began to protest. "I know what you saw, and I know you're speaking the truth," he said. "But everyone makes mistakes. It could have been the wrong island. They could have gotten there to discover it already like that moved elsewhere." 

"But Mumm-Ra--" 

"And you took his word for it?" Lion-O said, kindly but pointedly. Wilykit fell silent, frowning, and felt a little silly. He was the enemy, why would he tell the truth? "I guess you're right," she said. "I still think he was way too smug to be lying, though." 

Lion-O turned to the others. "I don't want to get your hopes up. it may be as they say. But I am sure you would like to make sure." 

"Yes," Pumyra said firmly. The others nodded. 

"All right. First, then, we must get everyone to the mainland. You are welcome to stay at the Lair for as long as it takes to get this thing figured out if you are willing. Then we need to devise some way besides the spaceboards to drive on the water. Then we can begin to sort this thing out." 

  


Bengali and Wilykit 

Part 13: Truce 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	13. Truce

  


13 

Truce 

Lynx-O invited Lion-O, Wilykit, and Wilykat to stay at their abode for the night while they made their plans, and they readily agreed. Contacting Panthro to let him know, since he had gone back to the Lair once he realized how long they were taking to get there, and let him know what was doing on., He answered everyone's questions and told them to expect three guests in a couple of days' time. 

Lion-O had made the twins tell them everything they had done, whether they were supposed to do it or not, and they did, through much fidgeting and mumbling. Lynx-O was smiling, as he'd raised Pumyra and Bengali and was well aware of such antics. Of course on the island they lived on it was difficult to get into as much mischief. But he'd seen, so to speak, his share of it. Passing the thread back and forth, often finishing the other's sentences, they related everything they had found 

Lion-O was rather spooked, and even Lynx-O's group, who had lived there, were unnerved. Especially when they mentioned the mist and the forest taking back the village into itself, and the creature they'd encountered that they believed had once been Thunderian. And their theory of mutation caused by the meteorite, and what they saw when they went to see it. 

"The forest was not like that around it when I went to see," Lynx-O said, remembering something that was getting more and more difficult to remember: sight. "It was burned, yes, because the meteorite was hot. But not mutated as you describe. I think you are right. It somehow reacted with the gasses in the forest and began to mutate everything, and to affect our village at an astonishing rate." It made sense, he realized sadly. 

The twins nodded. 

"Lynx-O," Lion-O said, "Please excuse us." 

The lynx nodded. "Of course." 

Lion-O gestured at the twins, and shoulders hunched, they followed him. Lion-O took them outside outside to tell them off for what they'd done saying that he would not punish them, but was very disappointed. The young lord spoke of trust, and lying, and the ThunderCat code of honor, the Code of Thundera. His lecture was far more effective than any punishment could have been. Being punished would have made them resentful, feeling further they were not treated as equals. But how Lion-O spoke to them, as friends who had betrayed his trust... 

Shamed, they stared at the ground, shifting their feet as Lion-O spoke, and neither of them said anything until he was done. "We're sorry, Lion-O," Wilykit said, digging her toe into the ground. "We didn't do it just because we wanted to lie to you or anything, honest." 

"Yeah," Wilykat said. "It's just that talking 'rationally' and "mature" like you guys always ram into our heads to do doesn't work! All it gets us is patronizing smiles and pats on the head, and someone saying, 'When you grow up you'll understand.' We do understand, a lot more than you guys think we do..." 

'...and can take care of ourselves a lot better! But no one listens to us, and when we do something to prove it...no one watches," Wilykit finished, and both twins looked up at Lion-O at the same time. 

To their surprise, he did not look angry. He looked thoughtful, like he was seriously considering what they had said. "You're right in many things, twins," he said to them. "And I should probably understand you more than the others do. It's difficult sometimes to get past appearances. It's hard to get past your small size, your youth. When an idea of a certain kind of person is lodged in someone's mind..." he shook his head ruefully. "That's one thing we adults could take a lesson from the children in. They are far more accepting. I accept your apology. I will speak with the others, and maybe we can come to an agreement. But for now, we have some things to take care of. okay?" 

He smiled, and the relieved twins smiled back, and they went back inside. 

*** 

Plans were made that night. lynx-O said that if they had someone among them who knew their way around machines that they could perhaps go back into the village and take one of the hover craft and repair it. They went on the water, he explained, and sighed. "I would feel badly, taking someone else's craft. But if what you say is accurate, they are in no state of being to be able to use them." 

Lion-O nodded sympathetically. "I truly am sorry for your loss." 

Lynx-O smiled. "Thank you. I only wish they'd listened to us." Then his expression hardened. "But with that Mumm-Ra creature, it would not have mattered, would it?" 

"I wonder why he hasn't done the same to us," Wilykit said. "I mean, if he could..." her voice trailed off. 

"We had no technology to protect ourselves with, Wilykit," Lynx-O said quietly. "I daresay your base and your weaponry has protected you." 

"Yeah," Lion-O said heavily. "That miserable bag of bones. He wasn't ready for the leap in technology our kind had made by the time we got here, I guess." 

"And the Sword of Omens," Wilykit put in. 

Lion-O nodded. "Well we had better get some rest," he said, looking out of the little windows to see that it was dark out. The flickering torches were all they had now for light. "We've got a big move ahead of us." 

In the morning, they used Wilykit and Wilykat's spaceboards to begin the trip back to the mainland, where Panthro would be waiting with the ThunderTank. Lion-O offered to take two of the adults first, as the twins were quite happy to stay behind for a while so that they could see the island. Bengali, in an effort to make peace, had also offered to stay behind and show them around. 

Lion-O was only a little bit wary of this, but remembering his vow to try and trust the twins on their own a bit more, he had agreed. Lynx-O seemed to be going through a similar debate, but in the end he and Pumyra had sat together on one of the boards. 

Lion-O had insisted that they practice a bit on land first, as they were a bit difficult to get used to if one has never used such a thing before. Lynx-O surprised him after a bit of practice by flying flawlessly around the island alone, with no one to guide him. Amazed, Lion-O asked him how he did it and hoped he did not take offense. 

Lynx-O chuckled, both at Lion-O's question and at Pumyra's teasing accusation of being a showoff. "It has been twenty years since I lost my eyes, young lord," he said kindly, putting a hand on Lion-O's shoulder. "I have had many years to learn this island, front to back. And many years to use all of my other senses to the best of their possible ability to compensate." 

"Well I am impressed, my friend,' Lion-O said with a grin. "I daresay you might even insist that you guide, while Pumyra sits behind you." He smiled at the young woman to let her know he was kidding. 

"And she _is_ a lady, and thus might be apt to guide us right into the water," Lynx-O said, teasing. 

Pumyra made an indignant sound and smacked him, right on the arm. And then she laughed. "Just for that, Lynx-O, you can stand in the back." 

But eventually, they were ready to go, and stocked up on supplies. Lion-O left the twins his communicator, taking the one they'd brought for that purpose. "You make sure and call if anything happens," he warned them. "We probably won't be back until the morning, or even the afternoon." 

"We'll be fine, Lion-O," Wilykat said, laughing. No matter how hard they tried, adults couldn't manage to leave anyone young alone anywhere without a million instructions. 

"Yes," Bengali said dryly. "It's only my home, after all. Why should I know it well enough to be safe?" But he smiled a bit to let Lion-O know he wasn't angry. 

"All right all right, I get the hint." Lion-O waved to the three and he set off, leading the way. 

The three youths spend the day roaming the island, and running around in the woods. They stayed up rather later than they should have, admittedly, but they were still up early in the morning, waiting for Lion-O. By the time he arrived, Bengali and the twins were fast friends. "All right," he said to the trio. "You've got the supplies ready?" 

Bengali pointed to two neat bundles on the shore, and Lion-O looked pleased. Even more please he was when he saw how they were acting with each other, almost as if they'd known each other all their lives. "All right," he said. "One adult, one kit on each board, to even the weight out. These poor boards have been protesting now for the past hour." 

"I'll ride with Bengali," Wilykit said with a grin. "I've got to teach him a thing or two about riding spaceboards." 

Bengali shoved her lightly, but he laughed. "All right, hotshot. Let's see your stuff." 

At this challenge, Kit hopped onto her board and did a quick spin-about before stopping so that Bengali could get on. 

The trip was tiring, but mostly uneventful. The exception to this was Wilykit smacking Bengali for a smart-ass comment he made, and him shoving her back. It was good natured enough, but it knocked the light kitten off balance and she fell into the water with a splash. This in turn tipped the spaceboard and Bengali too tumbled off. 

Lion-O got rather cross, and Wilykat laughed until tears came form his eyes, but there were no more incidents after that. 

That night they were all at the Lair, dry, clean, and warm. Lynx-O said it had been a long time since he'd had a hot shower, and Bengali had never had one. Red-faced, he admitted he'd been fascinated by the hot and cold water controls and had spent time playing with them, turning them down and up, which would account for the time it took him to bathe. 

The twins told everyone where the village was, and answered some questions that Lion-O had not been able to. They showed them the journals and books they'd found, and Lynx-O held his journal in his hands for a very long time, his expression unreadable. It must be strange, holding something you'd made when you could see, and now not being able to see it. 

They would go to the village in the morning. 

Part 14: Village of Mist 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	14. Village of Mist

  


14 

Village of Mist 

"You're right, Wilytwins," Panthro said, making a face as they made to go into the woods. "This _is_ creepy." He hesitated, then leaned over and asked them quietly, "Um, you didn't see any mutated bats flying around did you?" 

Barely managing to conceal their smiles, they both shook their heads. "That's not to say there aren't any," Wilykit said, not able to resist. "But we didn't see any..." 

"Great," he muttered 

As the ThunderTank pulled up, everyone got out and surveyed the dismal village. It felt bad. It felt like it was no longer a place of civilization. but a town of the wild, the unnatural. "We call it Village of Mist," Wilykat ventured. 

Cheetara, more than anyone, felt it. She was shaking as the twins led the way into the village. Lynx-O had been away far too long to know it well, and the others had been far too young. At the moment, the twins knew more about the layout of the town than anyone. 

"This place is wrong," she said, her face a mixture of trepidation and disgust. "There's something wrong here." 

"I know," Wilykat said. "Even we felt it a little when we first came here. It's creepy, and the stuff we found out was even worse." They showed the others everything they'd found, the homes that had all their things still in them, and the few that were cleared out. 

"Those belonged to the others that moved out to go to the island," Lynx-O said sadly. 

"We figured that out when we read your diary," Wilykit said. "And we went into the forest, too.. We saw the meteorite, and, well...we should show you." 

"Yes," Lion-O said. "I want to know everything before we decide what to do." He turned to the others. "Be wary of attack by...by anything." He could not bring himself to think too hard on the creatures that had once been his people. 

And so the twins led the others through the mists, and listened to them speaking, and exclaiming about what they saw, and felt. They too were discovering the things they had discovered upon going into the forest, and they also felt the wrongness of the place. 

When they began to near the place where the meteorite had landed, the twins warned the others. Already they were beginning to feel its draining energy, and moved closer to each other. 

Lynx-O grimaced in disgust, as he too had felt it once before. But now he would be spared the sight that greeted their eyes when they entered the radius where the mist did not obscure everything in shadows. 

Most of the ThunderCats gasped, and Cheetara nearly collapsed as they neared the meteorite. Lynx-O caught her arm as she slumped net to him and guided her away from the thing, feeling his way through the trees. Knowing the cheetahs' powers, he had no doubt the overwhelming sensory input her sixth sense received must have been great. And even touching the mutated trees was unpleasant, and his hand was soon covered in a thin coating of slime. 

"My gods," Tygra said, looking like he might vomit. "By Jaga...I have never seen Thundranium affect anything but Thunderians, and not in this way, surely." 

"W-we told you," Wilykit said. She and Wilykat had refused to get any nearer; they were feeling sick already from the Thundranium, and could tell it was affecting the others too, but like they had when they came upon it they were riveted in morbid, horrified fascination. "It reacted with the forest somehow, the-the gasses, or the magic that made it go...go bad like that..." 

"That is the most vile thing I've ever seen," Panthro said in disgust. 

"We need to get away form here," Tygra said, "The last thing we need is Thundranium poisoning." 

This seemed to break the unwholesome spell, and the Thunderians retreated quickly. 

Panthro wobbled a bit as he made his way back to the Lair in the ThunderTank with the others. But they all got back in one piece, although Wilykat had vomited once. 

"That was foolish," Tygra realized. "It was foolish, doing there without any protection against the Thundranium. From what you told us," he said to the kittens as he tended them. They were small, and so it always affected them a lot more than the adults. Tygra was still a bit sick, but Wilykat was still vomiting, and Wilykit was having difficult staying awake. "From what you told us about how those poor villagers were mutated, twisted form the forest's effects...and with you already having gotten a dose of it..." he shook his head. "I should have thought of it sooner." 

"N-no kidding," Wilykat said shakily, holding a bucket in his hands in case he needed to throw up again. "H-how could if have already affected us? I-I mean...i-it only took twenty years for the people to...to...de-evolve like that." 

"Something needs to be done about it," he said, finishing his examination of them. "I don't think any permanent harm has come to either of you but we all need to recover for a while and talk about what we're to do." 

The tiger gave Wilykat a shot to curb his nausea and vomiting, and washed him down with an antiseptic formula that felt good to the boy, who felt hot and feverish. He gave the same treatment to Wilykit and told them both to lay down on the medical beds and get some sleep. 

They were only too happy to obey. 

The next week was spent talking about what to do. After a couple of days of recovery, the twins still looking pale even after that time, the lot of them were seated in the council room talking. Snarf had already given each and every one of them (the guests included) a lecture on doing foolish things without preparing, and was not satisfied until Tygra assured him that no ill effects remained. 

He now at on the windowsill while they spoke. 

"The place is evil," Cheetara said. "It...it needs to be destroyed, or something needs to be done about it. It's a danger." 

"You can't do that!" Wilykit said, her expression horrified. "There are people, well, I mean they used to be Thunderians in there! And living creatures!" but she bit her lip, remembering the squirrel they'd found with eyeballs bulging grotesquely from its body like swollen sores. 

"Yes," Tygra said grimly. "There is that. And then we must decide, is letting them live the right thing to do or a cruelty?" 

"Who are we to decide?" Panthro pointed out. 

Lion-O sighed. This was a decision that he did not want a hand in making, but he had no choice. Yes, it was a danger to his people, and anyone else on the planet. of course, he realized, most of Third Earth stayed away from the place. maybe they were more intelligent tan they were, lion-O thought with a bit of grim humor. 

"Maybe there's a way to get that meteorite out of there without it really messing us up," Wilykat suggested. "Maybe Tygra and Panthro can figure out some kind of protecting suit that can shield it from us...or at least shield most of the radiation. Maybe it'll help against the mutating...whatever, too." 

"That's a good idea," Tygra mused. "But we don't know if the creatures are being affected like that because the meteorite's still there or if it's already reacted with the forest and changed it still more, so that no matter what we do with the meteorite it will still be a danger." 

Panthro growled low. "This is a difficult thing to decide." 

"Perhaps," came Lynx-O's quiet voice. He and his two friends had sat quietly,. listening to the ThunderCats speaking, He had remained respectfully quiet until now, but their lord seemed to welcome advice, even from those not of the nobles. "Perhaps the wise thing to do would be to observe. Conduct tests on the air, and the trees. See how much of the forest has been affected and how badly." he frowned. "Maybe find out why it's expanding so quickly, as we saw in the town. That is also a danger. The greenery seemed to have some kind of decaying properties that are breaking down stone and wood in a matter of months from what Wilykit and Wilykat reported." 

"It's almost sentient," Cheetara said, her face troubled. "Not completely, but there's a lurking, primitive sentience in that woods; collective, throughout the whole forest. It...it's tainted by evil, by the magic that Mumm-Ra used when he blasted it." She shuddered. "It needs to be taken care of, stopped, one way or another." 

"Find a way to stop it from expanding," Wilykit said. 

"Hold on a second," Wilykat said suddenly. "The Darkside...the forbidden territory. Why is it forbidden, Lion-O?" 

"Well I am not sure. Most of it's superstition, but other than that, there's Fire Rock Mountain, which, as I don't have to point out, could very well be fatal to us if we were to get too close." 

"Well I was thinking if we get those suits made up we could go _through_ the Forest of Mists into Darkside, and see if it's expanding there, too. See how different it is over there, and maybe get some idea on how to control it. I mean the sensors say it's all rock over there. That means the forest ends." 

"It's an idea, " Lion-O said, and smiled at the boy. "And not a bad one, either." He looked at Tygra. "I think we've got a lot of things to do in the next few weeks, my friend." 

"And we'll all help," Panthro said. "But meanwhile, we need to get one of those hovercraft working so we can check out that island and retrieve these guys' things form the island. " He looked at them. "That is if you would like to stay here." 

Bengali and Pumyra exchanged excited glances. All they had known was the tiny island., and would like the chance, at least for a little while. to stay at this magnificent fortress, and to help the ThunderCats! people that were only myth to them until now. 

Lynx-O smiled. "I believe that we would, Panthro. Thank you." 

"Then it's settled. We can do this, I know we can." Lion-O smiled at the group. "Meeting adjourned." 

Part 15: Plans 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	15. Plans

  


15 

Plans 

Finding a hovercraft that was still in shape to work was not too difficult. And even less difficult that Panthro fixed it. "If Panthro can't fix it, it's not fixable," Wilykat whispered to Bengali as they all watched him work, one of the twins running to fetch a part here and there. 

They would not come with them to the blasted island, though, although they told them where it was. They refused. 

Lynx-O, Pumyra, and Bengali came back looking very shaken. Pumyra was crying, and even the stoic Bengali looked like he was close. Had Lynx-O still been able to, there was no doubt he would have been, too. Even one with no psychic abilities whatsoever could not help but feel the death on the forlorn island. 

And so the question was, what now? 

"I've run a few tests," Tygra announced to the others. "I managed to capture some of the gasses and run them through several tests in the lab." He sighed. "I'm afraid that taking the meteorite out of there would do no good, twins. It was a good idea, but the blasted thing affected the ground itself, and the mists within, as they have highly mutative qualities. Enough that I want everyone, you two especially, to see me sometime within the next few days so I can look you over more extensively." 

Wilykit and Wilykat exchanged nervous glances. 

"It shouldn't have had too great an effect on you," he assured them. "The most I would expect is a bit of tampering with your normal functions for a short time, but I just want to be on the safe side. You were not exposed long enough to have a lasting effect." He addressed the group once more. "From what I can tell, any physical effects the place might have had on the people after this amount of time would be irreversible. The mutation was painless, from what I can tell. By the time they all realized what was happening, it was probably too late. And it would not have been long after that that they stopped thinking enough to care." He sat back, looking troubled. "So what now?" 

There was silence for a long moment, and then Lion-O spoke. "Well. We can't destroy the forest." He shook his head. "They're not suffering although I am not sure their minds are even aware of what's happening." 

"I believe it will eventually affect their reproduction systems, if it has not already, that they all end up sterile," Tygra added. "They...they may not survive even without our intervention." 

"Still, that option is out." He looked at the others. "But from what Wilykit and Wilykat have told us, the forest seems to be spreading, inching out. We do need to find a way to keep it from spreading." 

"I guess we need to see if it's spreading in all directions, or just in that direction," Wilykit said, putting her chin in her hands. 

"Blast Mumm-Ra anyway," Cheetara growled. "Have you twins been past the forest into the forbidden territory?" They both shook their heads quickly. "Hmmm. We'll be needing to go over to that area too, to check it out." 

While most of those in the room looked nervous, the twins looked rather excited. Lynx-O's group only looked puzzled. "The forbidden territory?" Bengali asked. 

"The area beyond the Forest of Mists," Lion-O told them, "is a place in planet-wide superstition as a place to be avoided, stayed away from. They call it the Darkside." 

"What's there?" Pumyra asked, then turned to Lynx-O. "Did anyone in the village ever go there?" 

"I'm not sure. I never did. There were warnings of danger, but no one ever said why. They never even gave it a name." 

"Well then, it's settled. Tomorrow, we will work on getting some suits made up and take a small party over through the forest when we can, to see what's on the other side." Before the twins could ask, he looked at them with a critical eye. "I _should_ make you stay behind." 

"Awww, Lion-O!" they both exclaimed. 

"You wouldn't have even known all what was doing on... 

"...if we hadn't explored and done researched and stuff!" Wilykat finished. 

Lion-O laughed. "Yes, by breaking the rules." 

"But we - " 

"Yes, I know, we've spoken on that already. You can come." He was amused at their relieved expressions. "I know you two have probably been busting to check the place out ever since you heard it was forbidden. I'm not going to hold you behind. But I still _should_." he gave them a wink and then told Tygra and Panthro, "If any of us can help with the protective clothing, let us know." 

Part 16: The Darkside 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	16. The Darkside

  


16 

The Darkside 

The suits were not too difficult to make, and even less difficult to test. Panthro, deemed as the most fit of them, was selected to test the suits that were made up. They were light and durable, tear resistant, with an energy source that kept any outside gasses away. He'd gone into the forest itself, sensors attached to his body in places of little fur (and he complained about them itching the whole time on the communicator) and Tygra watched the readings very carefully. Several hours did Panthro stay in there, even venturing close to the meteorite. None of the mist got to him, and even the radiation from the Thundranium was diminished somewhat. 

There were five suits, as only five of the Thunderians would be doing along. 

Tygra would be doing with his sensors and gauges. The twins, because it was their doing that had led to all of this (and they would just have found a way to go along anyway had they not been allowed.) Cheetara with her sixth sense and her speed, in case of trouble, and Lynx-O had asked if one of them could go along also. They had seen so little of the planet, and this did concern them after all. Lion-O had readily agreed, and Lynx-O told Pumyra and Bengali to choose between themselves. Lynx-O could visit the place at any time beyond if it was safe. And so the two younger cats had drawn straws, and much to Bengali's aggravation, Pumyra won. 

Lion-O tactfully cheered him by telling him they likely would not be making only one trip, and the three larger suits would fit him fine. He could go next time. Nodding in agreement, he asked if he could watch on the monitors, and Lion-O said of course he could. Tygra was bringing one of Panthro's floating ball-cameras. 

A few days later, after the suits had been tested a few times, they were ready. They would be on foot through the forest, except for the twins, whose spaceboards would maneuver easily through the dense trees. the little group took supplies for a few days just in case, and strapped these to the twins' boards, and off they went. 

"Make sure you report if anything happens!" Snarf called for the fiftieth time, it seemed. Lion-O had already gone over it, but the worrisome nursemaid couldn't help repeating it. 

"Yes, Snarf," Tygra said patiently as the twins rolled their eyes. 

They had an idea of how many miles of forest they would have to go through before they hit the rocky atmosphere of the Darkside. Their sensor sweeps had gotten that much. They'd been able to tell the terrain, little more, as the Thundranium had interfered a great deal with their scanners. Rock, mostly. 

It was unseasonably hot for the time of year, and soon the little exploration party was wishing they could shed their suits. But of course they would not, not after knowing what the forest had done to their countrymen. And who knew what Darkside would be like? 

The group moved in silence at first, trekking along at a steady pace. As hours passed, Wilykit griped about the covered hood of her suit, thought, until Tygra told her if she didn't stop complaining, he'd tape her breathing filter shut. He too, was very hot and getting irritable as the day wore on. Wilykit stuck out her tongue. 

It was late afternoon before they got there, and everyone, including the usually good-natured Pumyra, was irksome. But finally, and all of a sudden, they were looking out on a vast expanse of rocky terrain. The forest did not thin, it simply ended, almost as thick at the edge as in the midst. 

"What the..." Tygra frowned and looked back, glancing down at his sensors. "Now that's odd. I never saw a forest that just ended like that, except for that near water. This Third Earth is a strange place. Such sudden changes in soil and climate." 

"You're not kidding!" Wilykat's irritability was suddenly gone, now that they had finally arrived at their destination. 

As Tygra bent down to examine the way that the soil of the forest gave way in a mere yard or two to hard stone, Wilykat and Wilykit hopped down off of their boards. "And look, the mist only comes out a little ways," Wilykat said. It's like it evaporates or something without the trees around." 

"You may have something there, Wilykat," Tygra said. 

"Can we explore now?" he asked excitedly, hopping from foot to foot. 

"Hold on a moment. I want to see why this greenery isn't expanding, why the rock' not being broken down into soil. It may give us a way of controlling this place." 

The other four waited patiently (except for the twins, who shifted back and forth the whole time) while Tygra did a series of readings on the trees and rock at the very edge of the woods. After bout twenty minutes of this, he turned around, looking rather excited. "Kat, you were right!" he said. 

Wilykit blinked. "I was?" 

Tygra chuckled. "Yes. I've run a series of scans on these trees, and I can't explain it, but they're giving off an energy. A binding energy, it's keeping the gasses contained within a few feet of the trees themselves." 

"So," Pumyra said,. "If we stop the expansion of the trees, we stop the spread of the mutation." 

"Exactly." Tygra looked very pleased, as he always did when he'd solved a puzzle. "What I need to do is see if this stone is keeping the forest in check the whole way; the Darkside borders the woods on two sides, Fire Rock mountain being on one of them." 

"And we'll stay away from there," Cheetara said with a laugh. 

Tygra nodded, then looked to the twins, who both looked as if they were going to explode with the desire to explore. "All right, all right," he said amusedly. "I need to take a bigger look at this place anyway. Let's explore." 

"All right!" they exclaimed together, hopping on their boards. 

"But we stay together!" Tygra reminded them. "We don't know what's in this desolate place." 

And it was a desolate place. If there was any life here, it was not showing itself. It was a place of rock, with crevices and pits. Outcroppings and jutting rocks everywhere. It was a landscape of alien shapes, casting eerie shadows from the red glow of the nearby volcano. According to sensor readings, the volcano was active, but they intended to stay far enough away to be safe. The surrounding landscape formed a natural barrier, a moat of sorts, protecting most of the surroundings from its liquid fire. 

They moved slowly, held back by those on foot. But that was fine with the twins, so long as they were moving. And what a place. They examined the rocky wastelands until the sun went down and then some, the glow from Fire Rock Mountain shedding enough light for the felines to see in. And still, they saw no life except insects and some kind of bird that Tygra said he thought was a scavenger. And even those were few and far between, as what was there to eat except rocks? And there were not many animals that could eat rock. 

More than once, someone was startled by shadows, or rocks looming up seemingly out of nowhere. Even the kittens, while excited to be in such a strange new place, were spooked. But at least Tygra had deemed it safe enough to remove their suits, which everyone was glad of. The hot suits came off, and everyone was left in their light clothing, the warm breeze cooling the sweat on their skin and ruffling their fur. There was a collective sigh of relief. 

"I can't feel any life anywhere," Cheetara said, shivering a bit. "I've never felt, or seen, anywhere that was so devoid of life of any kind!" 

Wilykat nodded. "Yeah," he said, he'd been talking in a low tone. As in the village, it seemed odd to talk loudly here. "It looks like some meteor or something blasted the land, and got so hot that it fused everything to rock." 

It did seem like that in places. The rock was charred, burned, twisted into grotesque shapes. Nervously, he glanced at the volcano. ":Tygra, are you _sure_ that if it erupts we're not gonna get caught in it? Maybe that's what burned all this land." 

"That may just be so," Tygra said. "And yes I'm sure. There's a ravine between us deep enough to hold an ocean if it needed to, caused by a landquake perhaps. We're safe." 

The boy nodded, but did not look quite convinced. He glanced nervously at it once more, then continued on. 

  
  


Part 17: Firerock Mountain 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	17. Firerock Mountain

  


17 

Fire Rock Mountain 

Not too long afterwards, the party slept. They made camp under a large outcropping of rock, sheltered by the warm wind that blew across the stone. 

Near dawn, before the light of the sun began to light the world, Wilykat was wakened by something he couldn't quite explain. A deep danger sense, maybe. He saw that Cheetara already had wakened, and was gazing at then barely discernable peak of the volcano. She smiled at the boy when she saw he was awake. 

"What's doing on?" Wilykat whispered, moving to sit beside her. 

"I don't know. I felt a bit uneasy, but look. The volcano has been churning for the last half hour. Look closely." 

Wilykat squinted his eyes, straining to see what Cheetara was talking about it. But as his eyes adjusted, he could see. There were parts in the rock that went through to the inside of it, and he could see the turbulent lava inside. Little spits of molten rock flew from its top. "I-is it gonna erupt?:" he asked nervously. 

"It might," Cheetara said quietly, with a reassuring smile. "But Tygra's right, it won't harm us out here. but it should be a magnificent sight to see." 

"Okay..." Wilykat sat still and watched in the still, pre-dawn night. 

Twenty minutes or so later, it happened. There was a distant rumbling, like thunder. "Wilykit's not gonna wanna miss this," Wilykat said, as he reached over to shake her awake. 

"Why don't you wake the others? I think they'd like to see also," Cheetara suggested. 

The boy nodded and one by one shook the other members of the party awake. Whispering his explanation, he pointed. 

Fire Rock mountain was silhouetted against the graying horizon, its molten Thundranium surroundings giving it the unnatural illusion of glowing of its own power. As they watched, the rumbling and sounds of explosions grew louder. Tygra got out a pair of binoculars he had brought for the exploration mission, and the cats passed these around to get a better look. 

At first there was only noise. But all of a sudden there was a violent explosion from one of the lower crevices, and it began to spew lava down the sides. Wilykat jumped, then shuddered, instinctively gripping Cheetara's hand. She smiled and put an arm around the boy. 

A warm wind blew, towards the volcano, which was good, because it was now smoking, and sending ash and gasses into the air. Another sound of an explosion, and the main crater of the volcano began to fountain, and did so for several minutes, before bubbling down into a deceptively peaceful lava flow. Almost unnaturally slow, the molten rock coursed down the sides, a mixture of deep red, bright orange, and dark gray ash and rock. 

After a half hour or so, Tygra began to get some breakfast ready. He brought out the portable burner and a pan and began cooking up some eggs and a ham-like meat for breakfast. The twins continued to watch, which Tygra didn't mind at all. It was rare that they found something to keep them still and quiet for so long. 

But soon, everyone had eaten breakfast and was ready to move on. 

They spend the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon looking the place over. Tygra took his readings and collected his samples, and the twins looked for something new, something other than the crags and crevices. Every so often they would glance at the volcano (Wilykat's fear of the thing was bit assuaged, especially when he realized they could all be airborne with the spaceboards). 

The only other thing of note to happen in the dim place, dim even in the middle of the afternoon, as there always seemed to be a haze over the area, was the discovery of an odd looking formation. 

Wilykit insisted that it was a statue, and her brother was rather inclined to agree. But how could it be? As far as Tygra could figure, no one had lived here for hundreds of years, if ever. Anyone that had would have been destroyed by the eruption that ruined the land, which after much testing of the rock, he was certain had happened. 

But still, it was too symmetrical to be random; it looked like a giant horrible beast, with two arms raised up high, and a great mass near the bottom. It had been too eroded to tell what features it might have had. 

Again they made the trip back through the forest, and arrived back to the lair a little after midnight. Everyone was sore and tired, but no one had wanted to sleep in the woods, and had pushed on until they'd cleared them. 

The next day, Tygra spent testing all of his samples, and recording theories on how they could solve their problem, and the twins spent the day telling those who hadn't gone what they'd seen, and what it was like. 

After dinner, which Tygra had skipped much to Snarf's aggravation, the tiger announced his findings. 

"Well," he said with a chuckle as he brought some printouts into the dining area. he glanced at Snarf, who was glaring at him. The empty dishes were being carried into the kitchen, which meant he'd missed the meal. "I will eat when I've told everyone my findings." 

Snarf grumbled, grudgingly accepted Tygra's compromise. 

He turned back to the others. "Wilykat brought up the possibility of the Darkside lands being covered over with a volcanic eruption, and from what I can tell he was right. There's a layer of volcanic rock so hard and dense that nothing can grow in it surrounding two sides of the Forest of Mists. And the reason it has not broken down is there is nothing to break it down besides the wind. No one lives there, and nothing decayed enough to make soil. No nutrients, nothing for a plant to live on. It;s strange rock, and thousands of years old, from what I can tell. Andd it;s not broken down yet." 

And he went on to explain about the trees being essential for the mist being contained, and how the stony lands of Darkside prevented the plants and trees from growing. 

"Hmm," Lynx-O mused. "It seems like Nature has adapted to keep the rest of her lands safe," Lynx-O said. 

"That may very well be true. It might be nature's way of keeping a foreign danger contained, but it needs some help. I have a few ideas." 

Part 18: Eye of Thundera 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	18. Eye of Thundera

  


18 

Eye of Thundera 

"I don't think building a wall would work very well," Panthro said, shaking his head. "Too impractical. Too easy to be taken down." 

"And energy beacons are a good idea, and certainly easier," Cheetara put in. "But they have the potential to be unreliable. And also easy to sabotage." 

The ThunderCats and their guests were talking, still at the dinner table of Tygra's ideas for containing the forest. 

"That leaves only my final idea," Tygra said. "And I am not sure if I like that idea." This plan had been to simply blast a perimeter of land surrounding the two open sides of the Forest of Mists, blast it so that nothing could grow there, like Darkside. 

"But..." said Bengali. "The land on the other two sides isn't that dense volcanic stone Tygra tested in Darkside, is it?" Bengali said. "Eventually, the forest could break it down." 

"And," Cheetara said. "Wouldn't we just be doing the same thing as the mists are? Destroying the land?" 

There was silence for a few moments. 

After a while, Lion-O spoke. "You all bring up good points. But I'm inclined to agree that Tygra's last idea is the best one." He held up a hand to halt the arguments. "Wait. Hear me out." He looked at Cheetara. "Yes, we would be destroying land. But. It would be for one time only, and we only need a perimeter wide enough to extend a few feet farther than the mist can travel beyond the greenery." he looked at Tygra. "Am I right? The mist can only survive a few yards past the trees." 

The tiger nodded. "Yes. The trees naturally output a sort of organic force field." 

"And it's the gasses that are dangerous," Wilykat said. "Not the trees and plants, so it wouldn't matter if some of them pollinated farther than the barrier. If the mist can't reach them..." 

"...even if they grew up mutated, they wouldn't have the mist there making it worse. It could be normal eventually." 

Lion-O nodded. "Exactly. And there are enough ways to drive off any wildlife that might be living in the fields before we blast this perimeter." 

Tygra nodded, considering. "True..."he said slowly. "I suppose that it is a very small part of Third Earth to destroy to keep the forest from doing it for us." 

"Right." 

"That only leaves Bengali's observation left unresolved," Lynx-O said. 

Again, silence, and Lion-O looked down at his weapon. "I think we're doing to need a little help from the Eye of Thundera." 

There were a few more details to work out, but everyone had finally agreed that this method would be the most useful. There would be a great deal of preparation to be done; marking how far out, and how far along the forest they would need to blast, which would be a tedious and mundane chore. They needed to see how deep they wanted to blast, and figure out a way to warn the living creatures that lived in the fields. 

Cheetara said that she could handle that. It might drain her for a few days, a week even, but he could sense anything living in the immediate area, and could psychically ~nudge~ them from their burrows, to a safe area. 

And finally, the method of blasting came under discussion. The Sword of Omens was suggested, but using it to sterilize the soil, harden it into rock, was going to be draining enough on Lion-O, who still was not quite used to using the powerful magic. Blasting the area might just be overdoing it. 

"Cheetara's doing to be weak for days as it is," Tygra pointed out. "We don't need you out of commission too." 

And so it was decided that Panthro's new toy, the ThunderTank, would be doing the job. Its claws could dig up the earth, remove the grasses from their roots, and someone at the guns could burn it off. 

The Thunderkittens had wanted no part of the marking, as it required patience and a lot of measuring. "It's doing to be boring," Wilykit griped privately to her brother. 

"Yeah," he agreed rather glumly, Then he sighed. "But remember all that stuff about wanting to be treated as equals we talked to Lion-O about? If we just volunteer to do the fun stuff..." 

"Yeah, I know. I was thinking the same thing." Wilykit sighed. "Okay, let's tell Panthro we'll help mark the stupid lines." 

He was surprised, but pleased at their offer of help, and accepted readily. "It's doing to be boring though," he warned them. 

The twins exchanged a bit of a smirk. "We know, Panthro," Wilykat said. "We'll help anyways." 

"Well good!" Panthro smiled, clapping them both on the back hard enough to stagger them. "Glad to have you. I was just headed out." 

The twins followed him out. 

By that afternoon, Panthro and the twins had gotten a good deal of the territory marked out. Pumyra and Tygra were working on the other border, and at this rate, they'd finish by nightfall. 

"You know," Wilykit said. "Why don't we just dig out a trench along this border we've been marking all day, get some rock from Darkside..." She glanced over at Fire Rock Mountain. "Or even better, find a way to safely get some of that lava over here and fill it up?" 

"Same reason we aren't using a wall," Panthro said, holding out the ribbon-ruler. "Here, take this." 

The girl took it, and paced out a few yards. When she had the distance they'd been marking and stopped and painted the grass with a big blue X. "I guess you're right. but still, if it was deep, it would be hard to destroy." 

"By anyone but Mumm-Ra," Wilykat said darkly. 

"Oh yeah." Wilykit had not thought of that. 

Come twilight, the two groups met each other along the border, and grinned when Panthro and Pumyra finished out their lines and stood up. "Well now," the puma woman said, looking pleased with herself. "I swear, I'm not used to this kind of excitement." 

"This is nothing," Wilykat said with a grin. "Stuff happens all the time." 

"You'll get used to it living here though," Wilykit put in with a grin. 

At this, Pumyra actually frowned. "Well now, I'm not sure we'll be living here. I mean we do have a home." The thought of leaving the island made her feel a bit homesick. 

"Well isn't it kind of boring and lonely way out on that island?" Wilykit asked. "I mean, it's just the three of you, and with that hovercraft we fixed and the air vehicles Panthro's been working on, you could go there whenever you wanted to." 

"That's true..." 

"Well it doesn't have to be decided today," Tygra said, smiling at the younger cat. "Come on, it's nearly dinnertime, and I am famished. Let's head inside." 

The next day, Cheetara went out alone to the midway point of their project, sat down on the ground, and concentrated. As she quieted her mind, she began to feel the life forces of the creatures living in the soil and the grass. There were not too many, as the creatures were also wary of the unnatural forest, but enough that she would be most of the morning urging them out. She could exert her will over a large area at once, but she did have limits. 

And so she began. 

By midday, Lion-O got a call from Cheetara. her voice was weak, but she reported the land ready to be cleaned, and that she needed someone to come and collect her. Lion-O informed Panthro and went out to get the cheetah. 

Panthro and Bengali took care of the land-clearing. It was a great deal faster than marking it out had been, and by evening, the powerful new ThunderTank had cleared a wide border of land of its grasses and topsoil. 

When everyone had returned to the Lair, Lion-O addressed everyone present. They all gathered in the medbay, as Cheetara was lying down there and couldn't go anywhere for the time being, although she must be getting stronger in mind, she thought. It had not drained her nearly as much as she'd thought it would. She wouldn't be up to running any races for a couple of days, but other than that, she was all right. 

"Well," Lion-O said. "We did a heck of a good job I think, and an even better job of working together." He beamed at the three visitors, and the Thunderkittens, who had shown that they did know how to teamwork when they tried. 

"And now..." Lynx-O turned hi head towards Lion-O and smiled. 

Lion-O nodded. "I think it should be done tonight, get it over with," he said. The young lord took a deep breath and drew his weapon. He was nervous about doing something so large with the Eye. He hoped that he could take it. 

Lynx-o smiled. "Well let's go, then." He began feeling his way to the door. 

"Right...let's go." 

Part 19: Mumm-Ra 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	19. MummRa

  


19 

Mumm-Ra 

In a desert much farther than the ThunderCats had yet explored, there sat a mighty pyramid. The creature within had had many, many names in his long life (and afterlife), all of which struck fear to those that heard it. He was called Mumm-Ra now, a loose translation of his true name, from the ancient desert lands of Earth. He had rested for many days now, but a deep feeling of disquiet had urged him from the safety of his sarcophagus, and he now peered into the fetid scrying pool in front of him. It showed a milky image of the ThunderCats preparing the land around the Forest of Mists, and Mumm-Ra scowled. He had not expected the forest to react the way it had when he had sent his magical plagues throughout the world, but had been delighted by the results. How dare these insolent intruders undo his work? 

"This will be stopped," he murmured, and raised his hands above his head. "Ancient Spirits of Evil..." he began. 

*** 

Lion stood at one end of the marked border, the Sword of Omens in his hands. He looked nervous as he stood in the wind, his mane blowing in his face. He was afraid both of messing something up, and of harming himself badly enough to be in danger of dying. But the Sword of Omens wouldn't let that happen, would it? 

The other ThunderCats and Lynx-O's group stood behind him, watching as the young lord stood in the twilight. Cheetara had recovered enough to come out and watch, as she did not want to miss seeing the final stage of all their work. 

"All right," Lion-O finally said, willing his voice to remain steady. "Here we go." He held the weapon tightly in front of him and closed his eyes. His young but powerful voice began the battle cry that would cause the weapon to lengthen into a usable length, and that would awaken the Stone in the hilt that was the Eye of Thundera. It was pulsating with the very essence of what the ThunderCats were. The power of all that held the Sword before him could be felt in his blood as he held the beautiful weapon, and uttered the cry: 

"Thunder...thunder...thunder..." With each utterance, the blade grew in length. 

Bengali and Pumyra watched, fascinated, and even Lynx-O could feel the raw power pulsing from the weapon. 

"ThunderCats, HOOOO!" his voice rose almost of its own accord, and he felt the energy being channeled through his body. He felt the still-unfamiliar exhilaration as the symbol of the ThunderCats was cast to the sky, and the Eye of Thundera growled mightily as it wakened. 

"My gods," Pumyra said, rapt by the sheer wonder of the weapon's powers. 

"That's nothin'," Wilykit said with a grin. "Wait 'till he actually uses it. He just woke it up." 

Lion-O's mane was tingling with the power, an effect that always amused him, and did no less now. Not being able to help it, he grinned, suddenly not nearly so nervous, and turned around to face his friends. "Let's get this thing don - " he began, but frowned when Cheetara suddenly pointed. 

"Look out, Lion-O!" 

The young man spun around to see, out of the twilight, a dark shape soaring through the air towards him. "What in the-" he began, leaping backwards as the figure landed in the spot he'd been standing in the moment before. 

"Mumm-Ra!" the twins exclaimed in unison, their stances suddenly defensive, little capsules in their hands. 

Cheetara, Tygra, and Panthro also assumed fighting positions, as Lion-O scowled and narrowed his eyes, his own weapon at the ready. 

Mumm-Ra merely looked amused, his unnatural red eyes glowing eerily in the dusk. "So," he rumbled. "You've come to undo my work, have you?" 

"You work is evil, Mumm-Ra, and endangering my people and the people of this planet," Lion-O said, sounding braver than he actually felt at the moment. 

Mumm-Ra laughed, a terrible chuckle of cruel, mocking amusement. "Such ideas of valor, young Lion-O," he said. "Don't you know that there is only power, and control?" He shook his head and splayed his fingers out in front of himself. 

"Duck!" called Wilykat, already having gotten a taste of Mumm-Ra's power. He and Wilykit jumped, as the others also dove from the way. 

Lynx-O, Pumyra, and Bengali had been staring in horror until this point. When Mumm-Ra's fingers blasted their raw electrical power at the young lord, they all scattered. After all, this was the demon from their records that had destroyed the forest in the first place. 

Lion-O grunted as he held the Sword of Omens in front of him, blocking the energy of the attack. But still, it wanted to drive him back, and it took a great deal of his strength to stand firm. 

Finally, Mumm-Ra stopped the barrage long enough for Lion-O to duck down and send a bolt of energy searing towards the demon. 

Mumm-Ra cackled and rose into the air, the bolt of energy passing harmlessly beneath him. 

But now, Lion-O's friends were helping out. Cheetara's staff fired burst of laser energy at the ancient being, while Panthro's nunchucks did the same. 

As Mumm-Ra powered up for another killing blow at his adversary, Tygra's bolo whip lashed out, striking Mumm-Ra in the chest with an explosion of fire. He howled in pain, giving Lion-O an opening to attack again, this time hitting his target. 

Bengali and Pumyra watched, their eyes wide, as the twins darted into the fray, snapping their lariats at the demon's feet when he tried to rise, hurling light capsules at him, trying to distract them enough that the others could take him down or drive him off. 

Lynx-O's normally calm face even showed fear as he listened to what was happening. After twenty years living on a quiet island, this was a great deal of action. Snarf watched anxiously, worried only that Lion-O might be killed. 

And so the battle went. 

Had it just been Lion-O, or even three or four of them, Mumm-Ra might very well have killed them, or at least stopped their project. But with all six of them working together, their attacks perfectly coordinated, Mumm-Ra began to steadily recoil from the furious assault. Lightning flashed, and fireballs exploded. blinding flashes of light from the twins' capsules, and the energy blasts from the magical weapons the ThunderCats had been given lit the darkening night that one might have though it was high noon. 

But soon, Mumm-Ra's power failed him, and he nearly collapsed onto the ground. Staggering backwards, only enough energy in his body to rise into the air for retreat, he howled in fury and soared away like a malignant bat. 

Panting, the twins both sat down where they stood, leaning on each other in an exaggerated display of exhaustion. Cheetara collapsed, sweat pouring down her face, her staff falling to the ground. Frowning, Lynx-O heard her fall, and ran to her side. 

Panthro and Tygra stood watching Mumm-Ra's retreat, their fists still clenched, weapons still out, adrenaline still coursing through their veins, but when Tygra saw Cheetara had fallen, he also went to her side and helped Lynx-O tend to her. She'd fought when she shouldn't have, when she wasn't strong enough. 

And Lion-O, Lion-O had nearly collapsed himself, from the output of power he'd been using to defeat the attacker. So sudden it had been, out of nowhere. Why hadn't they thought that Mumm-Ra would try and stop them? After all, it was his doing they were working so hard to fix! 

"Is she all right?" Pumyra asked, as she and Bengali shakily approached the group gathered around Cheetara. 

"She will be all right," Lynx-O told her, standing up and shooing her and Bengali back. "Give her some air." 

The others also backed off a bit, giving Tygra room to take care of the cheetah. She opened her eyes groggily as Tygra wiped her brow with a cloth from his uniform pockets, wiping the sweat from her face. "Guess I overdid it," she mumbled. 

"Yes," Tygra said, looking concerned. "You shouldn't have taxed yourself after today..." 

"And let Mumm-Ra knock us around?" She managed a weak grin. "No way, Tygra. Someone needed to save your hide." 

Tygra laughed. If she was joking, she was all right. "Come on, let's get you back into the infirmary. 

But Cheetara shook her head, sitting up slowly. She closed her eyes and took a big breath of the cooling air. "No, I want to see Lion-O finish this if he can...and then I'll go." 

Tygra nodded reluctantly. "All right then..." He turned towards Lion-O. "Are you doing to be able to, now, Lion-O?" He didn't look so great himself. 

Lion-O stood towards the edge of the group, the Sword of Omens held rather tiredly in his hand. "I think so," he said, his voice steady. "It drained me, but I think I'm all right." 

"Okay. Then let's get this blasted project over and done with." 

The young lord nodded and stepped back, raising the blade above his head, then thrusting it down to aim its power at the marked ground. "Hooo!" he cried, his voice carrying on the wind. 

Again, the energy coursed through him, but this time it wasn't exhilarating. It was exhausting. but still, he kept on with it, before Mumm-Ra could power up again and return to finish the job. "Hoooo!" he cried once more, moving on several yards to blast again. 

And again. 

And again. 

For the next half hour, Lion-O channeled the magical power of the weapon into the soil, fusing it to rock, sterilizing it with a magic that Mumm-Ra would have difficulty undoing. When he was finished, he did collapse, and the twins decided that Cheetara and Lion-O could use their spaceboards and lot more than they could, and helped the others lift the two cats onto them. 

The Sword of Omens, its task finished, retracted onto itself, and Tygra slipped it into the sheath on Lion-O's leg as they pushed the hovering boards towards the Lair. 

Cheetara and Lion-O looked at each other as they were borne towards their home, and burst out laughing at how pathetic they each looked. But they felt good, because they'd succeeded. 

Part 20: Increasing the Ranks 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


	20. Increasing the Ranks

  


20 

Increasing the Ranks 

Three days later, the ThunderCats, Lynx-O, Bengali, and Pumyra all sat around the council table to discuss what they'd accomplished. They'd just gone out to check on their work, that day being the first they'd all felt like it. Cheetara still was shaky on her feet, and Lion-O was tired enough to stumble a bit as he walked. but at lest they were up and walking around. 

Pumyra mentioned something that had been worrying many of them. "After all of this," she said hesitantly, "couldn't that...that demon just do it again? I mean, it was his doing that changed the forests into that unnatural swamp in the first place. Couldn't he do it again?" 

"Yeah," Wilykat said glumly. "I was thinking about that too the other night. In fact I had a stupid nightmare about it last night." 

"Oh, was that what that was all about?" Wilykit said, looking at him. "You woke up screaming, then kept waving your hand in my face when I came over and tried to find out what was wrong." 

Wilykat's face broke into a sheepish looking grin as the others laughed. "I did? Wow, I don't even remember it." 

"Yeah. You poked my eye, too." 

This time Wilykat laughed, his face a bit red. "Sorry..." 

"That is a good question," Tygra said. "But the swampland, and the severe mutations were random act of nature. Yes, Mumm-Ra's magic changed the forest forever when he scoured the planet, but he couldn't have anticipated the meteorite, and couldn't have predicted its effect on the gasses and wildlife." 

Lynx-O nodded in sudden understanding. "It's too random," he said, nodding his head. "I understand...there's no way one can reproduce the chaotic properties of nature. He couldn't duplicate the effect if he tried." 

"Exactly." Tygra grinned. "So I think we're safe from that." His expression sobered a bit. "And as for him trying, well from the journals you found, twins, he did this planet wide. And he even said that every once in a while he had done so to prevent the citizens from advancing too far. To keep his control of the planet." He spat the word disgustedly. "How often do you think he can do that? he'd need to get so much massive power from whatever spirits or gods he gets his immortality from, that I doubt they would be willing to give it so frequently." 

"And he'd likely have to rest for years, even decades afterwards," Cheetara put in. "And we're too much of a threat, I think, for him to be willing to rest so long. That feels right, at any rate." 

This was good enough for everyone. Once this was established, everyone relaxed, and the tension in the room slipped away. 

Lion-O grinned. "Well, we did it, then. Tygra's readings show that there's absolutely nothing that can live on that rock we blasted. And because it was done with the power of the Sword of Omens..." 

"Mumm-Ra can't mess with it!" Bengali said, also grinning. "Man, that creature scared the living daylights out of me. I was completely terrified." 

"And you admit that?" Pumyra said, surprised. "I'm impressed." 

Bengali laughed. "Well the fact that I was cowering on the ground was kind of a giveaway," he said, his white face flushing pink. 

Lion-O stood, bracing himself against the table. "Well," he said. "I guess that brings us to our next question." He looked at Lynx-O and his two young companions. "You are welcome to stay here, at the Cats' Lair if you want to." He smiled. "Maybe even add to our ranks in time. Jaga knows we need the help." 

Bengali looked surprised at this, and looked down at the table, thinking. The idea of becoming a warrior had never occurred to him. All of his life he'd lived off the land as a hunter and a gatherer. There had been nothing but stories to even let him know what a warrior *was*. 

And Pumyra was also considering, Lion-O could see. Lynx-O's expression was unreadable. 

"But," Lion-O continued, "if you want to return to your island and your home, I would also understand, and we can help you do that. With the hovercrafts in working order, and safer now that Panthro got a hold of them, you could visit." He smiled at the panther who smiled rather cockily back. 

Bengali turned to Pumyra and Lynx-O. "What do you guys think?" he asked them. "I mean, the reverse is true, too. Anytime we think we need to we can go back..." It was obvious he was excited about the possibilities. 

"Well," Pumyra said. "Like you say, we can change our minds at any time,or return when we need the retreat." She looked at the others and smiled. "And it's been so long since I've been around other Thunderians that I scarcely remember it. A new beginning could be a good idea." She looked at the one who had been a father to her most of her life. "Lynx-O?" 

The old cat finally smiled and stood, having wanted to let the younger cats make their own decisions. "I am also happy in the company of others of my kind," he said. "And Thunderians have made many strides in technology and history that I must catch up on." He chuckled and turned towards Lion-O, extending his hand. "I believe we accept." 

"Cool!" the twins exclaimed as the two men shook hands. She stood up with a grin and narrowed her eyes at Bengali. "Now I can show Bengali how to fight." 

"What!" He also stood with a laugh. "I could beat you any day of the week!" 

"No way! And besides, you've got to catch me first!" The girl darted out of the room, and Bengali laughed and gave chase, with Wilykat hot on his heels. 

Lion-O laughed, a truly pleasant sound after so much worry. "Well, my friends, I think you will fit in just fine," he said. "Maybe someday those of us that survived will find their way here...and we can build again." he gazed out towards the Forest of Mists. "Rebuild what Mumm-Ra took away." 

As the others nodded, Lion-O dismissed the meeting, his hand raised in salute. "Hoooo!" 

And the cry was echoed back. 

Table of Contents   
ThunderCat Stories Page   
Main Page 


End file.
